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18

Don’t Worry So Much About the SEO Inner Circle

Writing by Nick Stamoulis    

I came across this post on Shoemoney.com the other day that talked about the kind of behaviors that would get an SEO professional ousted from the SEO inner circle (or banned for life from ever joining). It got me thinking, why are we all so concerned with being in the “in crowd?” Whether it’s our personal or professional life, we all want to belong to these almost mythical groups of “cool” people. I think it all started way back in Junior High when no one wanted to sit alone at lunch, but this mentality that we have to be in the inner circle in order to make it has carried over into our professional careers.

This is a post for any newcomers to SEO that are worried that because they aren’t part of the mysterious SEO inner circle they will never be able to make it as an SEO professional. While being part of (or at least recognized by) that SEO inner circle can help establish your reputation in the industry as an authority figure, not being included with the cool kids does not mean that you should give up on your SEO plans!

I have never been a huge fan of SEO industry conferences. I think they are a great resource for someone that needs to learn a lot of information in a short amount of time, and speaking at a conference can help promote your company brand and build authority, but my end goal is not to network with other SEO professionals—it’s to land a new client. Very rarely are potential SEO clients attending these industry conferences and tradeshows. More often than not it’s other SEO professionals looking to connect with members of the SEO inner circle. And while networking is important, it’s not my favorite activity. I’d rather take the couple grand it would cost to attend a conference (once you factor in airfare, hotel, car rental, food, etc) and spend a little extra on my content marketing or test out a few new banner ads—things that might help get my company a new client.

Many new SEO professionals are operating on a shoestring budget as is. I remember when I first started my business that I would take any client I could find, no matter how little or how crummy of a job it was, because I didn’t have any other options. Going to an industry conference to network and schmooze and try to work my way into the SEO inner circle wasn’t a financial possibility, even if I had wanted to attend every SEO conference possible to learn from the SEO masters.

I know a lot of new SEO professionals are looking to connect with the SEO inner circle because they have a wealth of information and years of knowledge to dispense. These guys have their fingers on the pulse of the SEO industry and always seem to know what’s coming down the pipeline. But here’s the thing, almost all of these guys have blogs, personal websites and social media accounts where I can learn everything I could ever want and more from them! I don’t have to fight my way into the SEO inner circle to learn, it’s all just a quick search away. Today’s online world is so transparent that you don’t need to be in the in crowd to know what the in crowd knows.

Having a piece of your content catch the eye of the SEO inner circle is great. A retweet from Danny Sullivan or Rand Fishkin is going to do wonders for your reputation among the rest of us SEO folk—but do your clients really know who Danny Sullivan and Rand Fishkin are? While being “in” with the SEO inner circle makes you look great to other SEO professionals, unless your clients are involved in the world of SEO (in which case, why are they looking to hire an outside SEO professional?), chances are it won’t do you much good in landing that client.

Now I am not suggesting that you completely forgo any attempts to make members of the SEO inner circle respect you and your work. The SEO industry is has enough rude, ruthless and disrespectful members; we don’t need any more. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to be so focused on getting into that inner circle right from the start. Focus on doing great work for your clients, building your business and developing your own voice as an authority figure. The respect of the industry will be earned in time.

How to Keep Your seo Efforts Organized with a Content Inventory Spreadsheet

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet   

This is a guest post by Amanda DiSilvestro of Business.com

Most people who have read my writing know that I have a good knowledge about SEO, but yet I am still young and have therefore only worked in the SEO department of one company. For this reason, the way that SEO is monitored here seemed, at least to me, to just be the way it’s done. Being that I focus on the writing and guest posting aspect of my company’s SEO efforts, I am very familiar with how we record all of the content that is put out onto the web as well as the content that is put onto our site. To me, this seemed normal. However, as I have recently discovered, not all companies are monitoring their content as closely as we are here in this second story office in California.

I have learned that having an inventory of all your content can be very helpful to a company’s SEO efforts. A content inventory is basically just a spreadsheet where you log all of the content written for your company. It does not matter if this content came in the form of a podcast, infographic, or traditional article; you log the information onto a spreadsheet. There are several different pieces of information that you may want to make note of in your spreadsheet:

•Title of the page •URL •Keywords used •Description of the article

An inventory of all of your content is designed to help you stay organized and improve your SEO efforts. Although all of these categories may seem like a lot of work, I can assure you that the benefits far outweigh the few minutes spent updating this sheet. I know that as a writer I absolutely love knowing where all of our content is at all times. This works especially great when you have an SEO team working to create content and improve SEO. It helps communication and it keeps you, the business owner, in the loop.

How to Set Up a Content Spreadsheet

There are a few things that I would keep in mind when it comes to creating this spreadsheet and then using it to improve your SEO:

1. Google Docs – I would highly recommend using Google docs to set up your content inventory because it updates in real time. Everyone can have access to the spreadsheet and it is always readily available when an employee is logged into his/her Gmail account. This makes it easy for one employee to pop over and see what the other employee is doing. This helps ensure that two people are not going to guest post on the same website or write about the same topic for the company website.

2. Analyze Keywords – When it comes to helping improve your SEO efforts, it’s important you analyze the keywords that you’ve used. This goes for both the articles on your own website as well as guest posting. In many cases, it actually helps to have separate logs for the two different types of content. You will want to look at the keywords you were targeting and see which content did well, which keywords seemed to get the most attention, and which websites you may not want to post for again.

3. Make Changes – Once you have all of your content and the keywords you used laid out in one spreadsheet, you can start deciding if you should delete pages that did not perform. You also want to look at the pages that did perform well and see if you can figure out a pattern or optimize the pages further.

I have been using a content inventory spreadsheet since I began this career almost one year ago, and I can tell that it directly affects the way that we approach SEO. Our team looks at this spreadsheet monthly to determine the type of content that does well on our site and the keywords that have gotten a lot of attention. Aside from only SEO advantages, a content inventory makes it easy to hold employees accountable for their work.

Have you ever used a content inventory spreadsheet before? Did you find that it helped make your SEO efforts easier?

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to VoIP phone service. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including errors and omissions insurance to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leadingbusiness directory, Business.com.

What’s the Value of a Non-Branded Visitor?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis    

A non-branded visitor is someone that finds your site by searching for a general keyword in the search engines, as opposed to searching for your brand or products by name. Depending on your industry and niche, someone that finds your site via a non-branded keyword might not be ready to convert the moment they land on your site. Especially in the B2B world, it’s hard to build that consumer confidence from one interaction with a potential customer. However, just because it might take a while to turn that visitor into a lead and then into a paying customer, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to drive more non-branded traffic to your website!

I was recently pulling together an annual SEO visitor report for one of my e-commerce SEO clients. Having a year’s worth of data really gives me the opportunity to look for emerging trends and have a better idea of where opportunities for their ongoing SEO campaign might be. I noticed that there had been a steady uptick of visitors throughout the year, even if some months showed slight dips (part of the seasonality of the business.) But what I was really glad to see was that the amount of non-branded visitors coming to their site was through the roof compared to last year. This is a fairly established brand offline, but online they hadn’t been competing well for important keywords against their top competitors. Branded searches had always been strong, but non-branded was where the real opportunity for growth was and I was pleased to see our SEO campaign had capitalized on that.

Why should increasing non-branded visitors be so important for SEO and your online marketing efforts in general? First and foremost, when non-branded searches go up, it’s a good sign that your SEO is working incredibly well; your site is ranking well for your top keywords AND is attracting the right audience! It also means that your online brand presence is increasing. People are finding your website in more and more places, even when they aren’t actively searching for your company. This could mean a social networking profile, blog post or video or internal page is showing up in the SERPs for a related search and is driving targeted visitors through to your site. You want to attract people to your site that have never engaged with your brand before! Even if they don’t convert right then and there you have established the first touch point in their buying cycle.

Of course branded visitors (the ones that search for your company by name) are valuable. In my experience, someone that searches for a company by name is nearing the end of their buying cycle and is looking to convert. That is why I like to focus my PPC efforts on branded keywords as opposed to non-branded keywords. I’d rather pay for someone that I’m fairly confident is going to become a lead. I’ll leave the driving of non-branded visitors to my organic SEO.