Weekly Open SEO Vault Round-up

Good morning and TGIF to everyone! What’s on your plate for this spring-like weekend?

I’d like to start doing a weekly round-up for you because I find myself culling through tons of newsletters, emails and blogs to find the latest and greatest in content marketing and SEO copywriting. So I thought since I’m doing the work anyway, I might as well share it with all of you so you can start your weekend that much sooner!

OK, here’s what happened in the search industry this week:

Yesterday (March 8th) was International Women’s Day — a day dedicated to celebrating women’s contributions around the world. Cheers to us all!

Last March, Google launched the “Panda Update” to weed out low-quality content from its top search results. Here is a cool infographic created by Search Engline Land & BlueGlass that shows how Panda works and the various updates from 1.0 to today’s 3.2.

SMX West 2012 took place this week and copywriters were urged to take note: Keywords Exposed as Secret to Success.  Described as “one of the foremost people in the keyword research industry,” Christine Churchill, President of Key Relevance, took the stage and asked the crowd, “What is keyword research and how do you do it? How much keyword research is enough? When should you do it?”

There will be much more to come next week as I get into a solid groove. In the meantime, please feel free to buzz me about anything you think we should know about for next week’s round up!

Have a great weekend

~Aimee

Quality SEO Copywriter or Link Farm? You Choose.

Happy hump day!

So, it happened again this morning. I’m sitting on the train, commuting to the city and reading my email. I plugin my internet stick and prepare to reply to an email I feel very strongly about, and the next thing I know I’ve got a full blown blog post — not the response to the email I had originally intended.

So, the email I read started out something like this …

“We’ve been talking with this guy, he has a social media background is great with analytics. We really think he’d be an asset. Do you think we should hire him?”

So I open up the link in the email to find a link farm. Seriously? A link farm? Paid links, affiliate MLM options, really? This is “the guy” with this social media and analytics expertise I’m supposed to embrace? <Sigh…>

Here’s the thing. Buying links is never a technique I recommend to clients who want long-term results. {I can hear the clickity-clack of keyboards as angry link-builders crafting their strongly worded emails to me!} Save yourself the time and blood pressure spike, I’m not saying all links are evil. I’m saying that all links are not created equal.

In my opinion, paid links is a band-aid approach to low search engine rankings. If you have crappy rankings, you have bigger problems than a lack of crappy links. Paying for links has been known to give certain sites a quick boost their rankings. The problem is that those rankings are short-lived.

My second opinion is that paid links are a thing of the past, a pre-panda tactic. Search engines are getting smarter and they’re demanding better quality from sites overall.

The issue that I have with using paid links as an SEO technique is that even if (and that’s only IF)  a site gets to the top of the rankings, odds are it won’t convert/get the click-thru. That’s because there was never a strategy put in place to cover, which is really the most important part. What do I always say? “What good is a #1 ranking for 100 keywords if none of your pages are converting?”

Link farms build links — that’s it. They don’t create quality, relevant, useful content (c’mon, stop the clickity-clacking again). Quality SEO copywriters are NOT a dime a dozen. Finding one sort of reminds me of American Idol in that everyone thinks they can sing write. But the ones who win get results are the ones who have a healthy combination of raw talent and years of industry-specific training.

How do you find an SEO copywriter who will help you rank well and convert? I’ll explain in my next post … I’m about 3 minutes from Union Station and I need to pack up my gear and hike up the office!

Cheers,

Aimee

In a world filled with too many choices…