[AMA] I'm a Search Engine Marketer (SEM & SEO) Ask Me Anything

cillianbc on 06/06/2018 - 15:04

Hi all, i am a Search Engine Marketer (SEM & SEO), self taught over the past 13 years. Worked with mom and pop business all to way to majors like Westpac & Sony.

I used to specialise in Google AdWords but have had a broad role the past few years.

If you have any questions around re marketing ( ads that follow you) on facebook,google, instagram, twitter et al I would be happy to answer

Also questions around websites, their structure, best practice and so on.

Not after any self promotion and i'm not trying to drum up business. I am currently employed at an agency and I don't do sales and have no interest in doing so.

AMA

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closed Comments

  • gaz3342 on 06/06/2018 - 15:13

    What do you consider to be THE MOST important thing to do to imrpove organic search rankings?

    • cillianbc on 06/06/2018 - 15:23

      Good quality relevant links is by far the most important now, it's getting harder for spammers to succeed.

      • gaz3342 on 06/06/2018 - 15:39

        So PR is a good strategy? How about links from your own / other people's social profiles?

        • cillianbc on 06/06/2018 - 15:44

          PR can work if the links you get are "followed" a lot of high profile websites give "no-follow" links which technically pass no SEO value. But "no follow" links have their value in other ways, people are more likely to click on a link on a high profile news website etc than they are on a blog about cats so it may help in that regard.

          PR can also help in getting people to search for your business if they hear about it from high profile resources. But for a lot of small and medium size businesses PR is not really going to work

  • activ8newbs on 06/06/2018 - 15:17

    I don't know much about SEO but I want to change that.

    Can you tell me mechanics of SEO as a whole? (simply)

    What do you do? Is it as simple as you adjusting the content of a website to include key words that the target audience would search, in an attempt to make your website rank higher in a Google search result?

  • cillianbc on 06/06/2018 - 15:33

    If we get a new client the process is the following

    1 - Audit the website from a technical standpoint - can google index the website correctly, is the website structured in a way that makes sense and is it easily follow-able by google and other bots. There are a lot of other technical factors like canonical links, meta, schema

    2 - Audit the existing content on the site - Is the content on all major pages well written, valuable and most important relevant to the product or service that page is intended for.

    3 - Keyword research - this is a hugely important step and can seriously affect the future success of SEO efforts. This involves identifying what keywords users are actually using to find the products and services the client offers. We then map these keywords to the relevant pages and check initial rankings

    4 - Implement new pages and technical changes from the above

    5 - Start creating both onsite and offsite content that is high quality, relevant and more importantly is targeted to information that people actually search for within the industry. The offsite content is intended to gain valuable backlinks

    There is other elements like Google My Business if the client is a local service such as a dentist or mechanic etc, the strategy does change in those instances

    • Cheap Charlie on 06/06/2018 - 15:54

      There is other elements like Google My Business if the client is a local service such as a dentist or mechanic etc, the strategy does change in those instances

      Interesting to watch the growth of GMB.
      Posts is an interesting feature and get a high ranking in the SERPs
      Are you doing much with posts at this point in time?

      • cillianbc on 06/06/2018 - 15:57

        Yep we post regularly to client GMB. I was skeptical initially but the are starting to get good traction with good impressions and people actually clicking through to the original post or event.

  • Cheap Charlie on 06/06/2018 - 16:17

    We self manage our own web page.
    I have been regularly changing the carousel images on the home page and some of the wording chasing the current content component in the google ranking.
    A little broad of a question, would you feel I am postentially wasting my time?
    We are limited in changes we can make as we do not blog on the page.

    • cillianbc on 06/06/2018 - 16:24

      Changing the images won't have much of an effect. Regular changing of your home page content will effect rankings, especially if that content is in the first 1/3 of the page. This doesn't include your navigation just the main body content.

      I wouldn't necessarily say you are wasting your time, but you are moving the goalposts every-time you change the main homepage content.

      I'm not saying you can never change it, but if you put enough time and research into what you have there then you shouldn't need to change it often.

      An exception would be an ecommerce site where they change products on special etc, but even then I would recommend that main body content should remain unless it's not working

      • Cheap Charlie on 06/06/2018 - 16:28
        +1

        Makes sense
        Thank you for your time

      • [Deactivated] on 06/06/2018 - 16:49

        Will the effect be positive?
        And how often is regular?

        • cillianbc on 06/06/2018 - 16:54

          It might be positive or negative. There is a lot of variables that would influence it such as the keywords your were already ranking for on that page, whether or not the content was influencing it and to what degree, what your competitors are doing.

          By regular I think every month or every few weeks.

          This isn't a hard and fast rule and i'm only referring to main body content, not navigational, footer, header or sidebar.

  • Tee Rex Arms on 06/06/2018 - 22:35

    No thanks

    • cillianbc on 06/06/2018 - 22:37
      -1

      Pretty please?

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