Starting SEO from scratch - needed some advice

1-4. No

Please do not do any of these things, these are spammy, shit techniques that in time will destroy your business.

Do some research on how to do outreach, and ask sites that are related to your industry to link back to you because you have created something amazing that would benefit their readers.

My site has a pretty in depth guide on how to do most of this but that's for an agency and you likely won't need this much work.

If I'm honest you shouldn't be doing this yourself, your post shows a clear lack of knowledge and its basically a death warrant for your site.

It sounds to me like your results were lost either from some form of penalty or you were receiving links from this guys network and once you stopped paying he removed the links and your results with them.

The latter is better for you as it simply means replace the links and your results will return however if its a penalty then I wouldn't try to remove it and recover by yourself, getting a penalty removed is the brain surgery of SEO.

You should hire somebody to do it for you. I'd steer clear of this forum for an SEO provider though.

Dan,I'm also looking for an SEO provider, though I'm looking for one to partner with for my off-line business. The plan is to dominate the rankings as I'm currently on page 30. A couple of years ago I was on page 1.. Why would you steer clear of this forum for a provider. Where is the best place to look.

I've done my own SEO for the last 13 years... and a few times have been able to get my sites to the top 3 of Google for some pretty competitive keywords.

And honestly, the only things I've really focused on lately, are....

1. GREAT content that I put onto my sites regularly... not trying to oversaturate for my keywords... but rather just write kick ass content for my readers. The on page SEO tends to take care of itself naturally, just by talking normally and using my keywords when appropriate.

2. Getting relevant, quality links back to my sites. Like the above poster mentioned... forget all the spammy "grey" techniques... just stick with finding legit links, from quality sites/sources... and just mention how you're building a great resource site with amazing content that their visitors will find helpful. Getting links isn't tough if you're just honest and say "hey, look, I've got some valuable content that I think your reader will love"

and yes, there are legit ways to get links outside of asking for them.... but that's another ballgame.

3. I'm seeing social signals factor in rankings more, so I use plugins like Sharexy and other social share tools to try and get shares of content.


But honestly, no where did I try to "game or cheat" the system... I just try to do what natural SEO would be like... which is add amazing content to my site, ask others to link to it because it's good, and then try to get people to share it with others.

Anytime you're out looking for short term solutions to SEO... Google can change one thing, in one second, and wipe out your work instantly.

I would advise to outsource it because you can do more harm then good if you do not know what you are doing.

Listen you can go and hire someone for $2 a hour to do it for you this way your time can be better spent building up your business and lead gen...

Well my specialty is video Seo in which ALL of these still work!!! I don't believe theres a such thing to do SEO cheap UNLESS you pay with your time buddy.

Do you have the time to optimize your site???

You will need social proof and high pr links from revealing sources. GSA can work but you can't do volume and a lot of crap links. Only high quality links, people just usually use GSA for spam that's all.

While there are some very valid points being made in this thread, I have to play a bit of some devil's advocacy here.

I develop and manage SEO/SEM campaigns on a regular basis, for client of all shapes, sizes, and needs. I'll tell you...there is genuine value in what are normally perceived as "crap links." Now, would I ever propose that a campaign should be built on a foundation of crappy, spammy links? Absolutely not!

But, to deny that Google still gives link love for directory type sites (and other sites of the perceived junk variety) would be to ignore what is still a big part of the game.

Is content king, queen, and everything in between? Yes, and I don't doubt the ultimate value (to visitors and search engines) of powerful content, but I do doubt the potential for success with a campaign built solely on high quality content and solely high quality link sources. Here's why...there doesn't exist a big enough volume of them! And, unless you have a large budget or a talented and dedicated content creation team, chances are you're not going to be on their radar.

You really think Panda/Penguin completely obliterated the value given to those so-called low quality links? Not at all. Need proof? Just pick a niche and pull the URL's of the top three sites. Stick them into Open Site Explorer. Just take a look through the URL's of some of these backlinks. So...still think a large volume of junk links will send your site to Google hell?

I firmly believe the Pareto Principle is in full play here... 80% of any good SEO strategy should be built upon the firm foundation of genuinely valuable content dispersed to sources who have a high authority, not just with search engines, but with an audience that is truly responsive, relevant, and ready to buy if it makes sense to at the time. On the other side of the coin, there's no problem with 20% of a solid SEO campaign consisting of volume links that can be achieved through automation or outsourcing. In fact, without this 20%, your chances of success could be slim to none.

Hi sounds like an interesting situation. But the good news, as you indicate, is that you haven't completely dropped off the map. As far as the things that you asked about in your points 1-4, I'd echo several of the other forum members who've already told you to stay away from these barebones automated methods.

And I know, from experience, that the temptation to try to go this route anyway can be really strong. On the one hand, being able to use these tools CAN have that effect of making you feel like an SEO-god. On the other hand, the lure of a quick fix is almost too much to resist also.

But please take it from someone who has been there and done that several times over - Don't Do It. SEO involves so much more than these pre-panda/penguin tactics. Furthermore, these tools leave a footprint that is easily detectable by the likes of Google - which means that even if you manage to luck up and get one or more primary keywords ranked by using SENuke; you're most likely looking at an extremely short lived scenario. Because as soon as you trip Google's unnatural link trigger, that's it.

I once worked at an agency that got through its launch phase almost solely based upon SEO automation tools. And guess what...As soon as Panda hit, every site that we "SEO'd" thru our automation tools got buried in the SERPs.

That being said, if I were you; I'd focus on two things and three things only...

Content, content, content!

To be sure, focusing on creating great content for your website means more than just focusing on content. It also means taking a much deeper dive into keyword research and competitive analysis. But in a nutshell, you want to make sure that each piece of content that you write or buy will be worth your time/money. You do this by:

1. Data Mining Your Own Site - Reviewing your website's visitor patterns via Google Analytics. Look for the terms that have already generated the most visits. At the same time you're doing this, be on the lookout for high bounce rates (70% or more). Sometimes high bounce rates signal content gaps on your site. i.e. the visitor though they were going to find information on "a,b,c" on that page but instead they only found info on "x,y,z" and they immediately hit the back button on their browser; thus exiting from your site.

2. Keyword Research - Before you create new content for your site, whether it be page or blog post content, it's always a good idea to make sure that the topic that you're building content around already has good search volume. Now that Google has gotten rid of their Adwords Keywords Tool; I'd recommend investing in a tool called Market Samurai.

After doing your keyword research export the results to spreadsheet format and then sort the keywords by keyword value (exact keyword volume*estimated adwords CPC) - from highest to lowest. I generally like to include a nice mix of local and non geo-specific search terms in the research.

Note: Don't get rid of the keywords with little or no value. More on that later...

3. Rank Checking - The tool that I use to check my keyword rankings is called Traffic Travis. Like Market Samurai, it's a one-off desktop software that has saved me a lot of money over the years. Basically, I use this tool to keep track of my rankings. Of particular interest to me are keywords where I'm already ranking buit I'm only ranking in positions 2-20.

Once you've identified a set of keywords that you feel is worth your time going after you can cross reference the keywords that you identified in your data mining session, along with the high value keywords that you found in the keyword research phase.

Any keyword that is on both lists should be a top priority keyword, since you know that you're already ranking for it. However, before you decide to focus on it - make sure that it's not a keyword that you already rank #1 on before you decide to target it.

Now that you have some well researched keywords to build content around you want to dive into creating your content. The main thing you want to pay attention to as you write or acquire search engine friendly content is to not go overboard with using your main keywords. I typically will use my main keywords once in the title and once or twice in the body of the content.

By now you're probably wondering, what's the use in the extensive keyword research, right? The answer is this in addition to your primary keywords, you will inevitably come across secondary keywords otherwise known as LSI keywords.

These are keywords that are related to your main keywords but that don't necessarily have the same meaning. For example, in a photography situation a primary keyword might be wedding photographer anytown.

However, an LSI keyword might be anytown wedding videographer. Note: This might have been one of your low value keywords that doesn't get much search volume but that does give the search engines a good idea of what the page is about.

If you were to consistently use this methodology to add 4 or more pieces of new content to your site every month, you'd put yourself in a great position to see positive movements in the SERPS - over time.

Once you've gotten a really good routine going, I'd advance my further by adding local SEO to the mix.

Hope that makes sense!