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Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

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Re: Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

#51

Post by joel_hughes »

"Basic SEO" to me would be doing a good job of understanding the client's products & services during the design process and making sure these come across well in the build - especially with good URLs (eg http://www.mycompany/weoffer/service-name/ etc) plus making sure that key page website copy is written in light of the obvious keywords/phrases for their industry.

If the above sounds obvious then you'd be amazed how many sites I come across which blatently ignore this - if you don't put the raw ingredients into the mix - Google aint ever gonna bake you a cake!

Basic SEO (to me) is NOT: - advanced keywords research - advanced off site SEO tactics - probably not keyword/time tracking

Joel

Ps I never really class Adwords as SEO

Pps apologies for any typos - on my BB

Re: Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

#52

Post by froo »

xal wrote: post #48
prawn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On #3, you can pay someone $6/300 words to get unique content written (and that includes some level of SEO research on the phrases you request). If the quality isn't quite what you'd hoped, use those articles as a starting point and then expand on them, tweak them and reword certain points. Paying more for higher quality pieces is an option too.

how do you go about that? Are there services that facilitate such article writing?

Whenever I've done this type of stuff, I've just farmed out my article writing to elance.

Some article writing services do pretty much the same thing, being essentially middlemen rather than having talent inhouse, which is why I don't recommend them, but YMMV

Re: Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

#53

Post by stef25 »

"Put up a site about a profitable niche, do some basic SEO, and bam! presto! Instant $50/month!" I've done this but the 10 page site brings it a little less, about 30 - 40USD / month. No adwords, wrote the content myself, only one or two incoming links. If your niche / keywords are specific enough you'll rank in the top 5 without many problems.

Keep in mind that since the content is very specific and does take some time to write (research, ...) knocking out 100 or even 10 sites like this would be quite hard work.

Re: Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

#54

Post by stef25 »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #18
jsm386 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All good advice. I'd add: 1 Speed matters. Google is on record about this. They want your site to load quickly. This factor is part of the 'caffeine' update that Google is in the process of rolling out http://searchengineland.com/site-speed-googles-next-ranking-... 2 Don't stop with H1s. Think about the structure of your page. Subheaders should be H2, and so on. 3 Use Google Webmaster Tools to submit a sitemap. They'…

You don't need a site index unless you have a strange site. If you have text/HTML and you are linked from other sites, the site map won't matter.

The advantage of a sitemap, linked to from say a footer link on every page of your site, is that it's easier to find than a page 4 levels down. This actually makes all pages on your site "findeable" at 2 levels down (homepage > sitemap > target page). I think it should improve indexing on otherwise hard to find pages.

Re: Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

#55

Post by prawn »

metaprinter wrote: post #49
prawn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On #3, you can pay someone $6/300 words to get unique content written (and that includes some level of SEO research on the phrases you request). If the quality isn't quite what you'd hoped, use those articles as a starting point and then expand on them, tweak them and reword certain points. Paying more for higher quality pieces is an option too.

where are some good places to buy or commission such articles?

Email me: isaac & triplezero!com!au

Got a contact who takes a keyword or phrase, does research to extrapolate, writes content pertaining to it, and then delivers it. Can also ghost-write ebooks and the like. Tried three different, cheap writers and her work was better than the other two.

Re: Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

#56

Post by prawn »

xal wrote: post #48
prawn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On #3, you can pay someone $6/300 words to get unique content written (and that includes some level of SEO research on the phrases you request). If the quality isn't quite what you'd hoped, use those articles as a starting point and then expand on them, tweak them and reword certain points. Paying more for higher quality pieces is an option too.

how do you go about that? Are there services that facilitate such article writing?

See my other reply to this thread. Happy to pass on a contact I've used, compare notes, etc.

Re: Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

#58

Post by prawn »

froo wrote: post #52
xal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you go about that? Are there services that facilitate such article writing?

Whenever I've done this type of stuff, I've just farmed out my article writing to elance. Some article writing services do pretty much the same thing, being essentially middlemen rather than having talent inhouse, which is why I don't recommend them, but YMMV

When I found three writers I trialled, it was through elance. Tracked down their portfolios and contacted them off-site. One was in Australia and I believe they outsourced the writing to Asia and the quality (writers who weren't native English speakers) wasn't great. The one I favoured was from the UK. If she was outsourcing, it was to decent writers.

Re: Ask HN: "Basic SEO"?

#59

Post by DotSauce »

If you use WordPress I have written an article detailing some common SEO mistakes and how to fix them:

1. Bloated title tag and abandoned post titles

2. Lack of relevant keywords and phrases

3. Disregarding the NoFollow link attribute

4. No Sitemap or ping notification to search engines

5. Not adding images in posts

6. Improper anchor text for internal links

For my suggestions and solutions to these basic SEO issues, continue reading...

http://www.dotsauce.com/2009/11/17/wordpress-seo-mistakes/

Do not listen to the black hat advice! Organic SEO pays off much more in the long run.

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