tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post3286923044654455648..comments2024-01-19T03:22:59.320-08:00Comments on SoCal CTO: SEO for StartupsTony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-81362072482832334022009-12-13T06:54:37.173-08:002009-12-13T06:54:37.173-08:00hey u have done great work Mr. i also agree with A...hey u have done great work Mr. i also agree with Alon's point. <br />keep it up n best of luck for future life<br />Regards<br />Ashuaysh tuliphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01077720895747960264noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-83503729409919824302009-12-03T04:47:25.570-08:002009-12-03T04:47:25.570-08:00@Schikowski Great point. If you pick a few long t...@Schikowski Great point. If you pick a few long tail term that has enough volume and work on those only, you can get a sense if the numbers work out.<br /><br />You can probably do that pretty easily, but you definitely won't get the payback for the initial amount of time. But it would feed nicely into your analysis process.<br /><br />Good point!Tony Karrerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-63047498966498233432009-12-03T03:41:20.381-08:002009-12-03T03:41:20.381-08:00Hi Tony,
Targeting long tail phrases is a good st...Hi Tony,<br /><br />Targeting long tail phrases is a good starting point for them to experiment with SEO because they can see results fairly quickly. I like to advise newbies to target an easy search term until they achieve a #1 ranking, then target the next one and so on, until they have enough experience to target major keywords.<br /><br />Whether or not this would drive enough meaningful traffic depends entirely on the business they're in and on the search volume of their keywords.<br /><br />That's what I like about your post, you are giving them the right point to start out.<br /><br />Cheers!Schikowskihttp://twitter.com/schikowskinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-6846006117890847912009-12-02T22:24:59.117-08:002009-12-02T22:24:59.117-08:00Is the website Good?
This might sounds like a fun...Is the website Good? <br />This might sounds like a funny thing to say as a guideline, but I think it bears mentioning. An economical SEO firm can’t do SEO for a website that comprises just a few pages of flash, or a few pictures embedded into 3-4 pages. SEO is a major commitment. Before you start SEO, you need to have a professional looking site on a stable server. Without this, the economical SEO firm is not going to give you the results you desire. <br />From now on, I think that traditional SEO will get into the top 10 on Google. But, to get to #1 for a popular search phrase, you will need to painstakingly keep improving and editing your website until you have really low bounce rates. My SEO guideline is that you need to make sure that when people get to your website, they find what they’re looking for. I reached this conclusion after reading about personalized search. I think personalized search will be of great concern to many SEO companies. Personally, I think “personalized search” is the holy grail of algorithms to rank websites. It’s virtually impossible to fool and will continue to change the SEO industry. <br />If you're looking for a good introduction to SEO guideline, check this one out. http://www.bergstrom-seo.com/resources/google-search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf. It was written by google, and it's really good.SEO Stratagemhttp://www.bergstrom-seo.com/articles/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-86071642349340528682009-12-02T08:10:14.809-08:002009-12-02T08:10:14.809-08:00@Schikowski - thanks for the comment.
I used a co...@Schikowski - thanks for the comment.<br /><br />I used a couple of different sources for the click through rates on different placements. <br /><br />From my experience, the rates are highly variable based on the kind of search being done. <br /><br />I should point out that the numbers I'm showing are actual clicks - which is about half of the searches. So, if I take your numbers 65, 20, 20 and divide in half:<br /><br />32, 10, 10 - not all that far away from mine.<br /><br />And like you said, the drop off is pretty steep.<br /><br />I believe we are pretty much on the same page, except for your last statement:<br /><br />"can easily be adapted by startups"<br /><br />I think many startups interpret that to mean that they can easily drive enough traffic to be meaningful. You need to be careful on that assumption.Tony Karrerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-36739126047485473102009-12-02T03:05:43.402-08:002009-12-02T03:05:43.402-08:00Hi Tony,
Great post and a very important topic.
...Hi Tony,<br /><br />Great post and a very important topic.<br /><br />What I noticed is that you may want to re-think the numbers you provided for click-through-rates on positions 1-10. I assume you are referring to organic search results. From my experience, and according to numbers I've seen, #1 gets as much as 65%, #2 and #3 a combined 20% and the rest isn't even worth mentioning. The traffic you can expect from a #1 ranking is so much higher than what to expect from #2, that it isn't practical to start with targeting search terms where you won't have a chance to rank #1. <br /><br />On the other hand, your search terms are what they are, and so is your competition. That's why I like your approach of targeting the long tail first.<br /><br />The thing is that in the long run you want to target high volume search terms to really start getting traffic. So I would target one long tail search term after the other, and try to grow the site to take on the "big guys" at last.<br /><br />I think your strategy provides a great starting point and can easily be adapted by startups.<br />Cheers!Schikowskihttp://twitter.com/schikowskinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-49052529165348666532009-11-13T23:48:28.886-08:002009-11-13T23:48:28.886-08:00Tony, nice post. SEO is an important online market...Tony, nice post. SEO is an important online marketing strategy, but it takes skill and time before it makes much of an impact (as you speak to in your article). Creating a deep site loaded with quality content, publishing geo-specific "long tail content", generating a high number of relevant inbound links - these are all elements of SEO that work against any fresh new URL. <br /><br />One of the reasons we created Heardable.com is to help companies (both start-ups and established firms) measure how effective they are at making their brand visible online. Search marketing is a big part of our Heardable Score...SEO for CEO's as we like to refer to it.<br /><br />Your readers might want to try it out. http://www.heardable.com<br /><br />Best, - PorschePorsche Nguyenhttp://www.heardable.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-38874278539979715572009-11-10T11:32:27.066-08:002009-11-10T11:32:27.066-08:00Hi Tony,
you're absolutely right - in terms o...Hi Tony,<br /><br />you're absolutely right - in terms of Google juice not so much.<br /><br />What I meant was more to the tune of: if i start "ABC company" today and submit my articles/pr's with links about it to a couple of the good directories, I can be certain that googling "ABC Company" next week will result in a couple of my articles/pr's showing up on the front page of google. I've now instantly controlled what a user sees on the front page when they google my startup! <br /><br />Good initial base of first page results...and from there on it's onto more quality methods of SEO, as you've described.Alonhttp://www.odijoo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-76284520147835807562009-11-09T15:54:52.024-08:002009-11-09T15:54:52.024-08:00@Surf - good call that part of what any startup sh...@Surf - good call that part of what any startup should be doing is setting things up so they are good from a user and spider standpoint.<br /><br />@Greg - I'm not sure I agree that the analysis would be all that different. Maybe I'm missing it, but wouldn't you still go through and figure out what and how much traffic you could capture if the specific focus was selling particular kinds of harvesters.<br /><br />Possibly you are saying that before they dismiss SEO, the founder should spend more time doing deep dive to figure out how people are searching and if they can capture that. I would agree. <br /><br />BTW, I agree that you will probably be targeting specific kinds of keywords as you describe for your example. And it's possible that the value of a click in that particular situation is high enough that optimizing for relatively little search volume is worth the time. The volumes in your particular scenario are going to be small.Tony Karrerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-83381614245190157612009-11-09T15:43:52.651-08:002009-11-09T15:43:52.651-08:00Nice post Tony, a great intro for website owners t...Nice post Tony, a great intro for website owners trying to understand the value seo presents to their businesses.<br /><br />Only one problem though with your article, the thing you don't point out is what the "farming" startup is focused on selling.<br /><br />If it was "farm machinery" then your article and subsequent conclusions would have been different. Also the startup selling farm machinery would definitely not be trying to rank for "farm machinery".<br /><br />Why?<br /><br />Simple.<br /><br />If I am looking for a "combine harvester new or used", I am looking for something in particular. Which incidentally is how people search in the real world when they are focused on buying, something in particular.<br /><br />The job of an seo consultant or internet marketing professional is to assist their customers by clarifying what are worthwhile keywords to pursue. There is no point is spending a long time and a lot of money to rank highly for a keyword that will rarely convert to a sale.<br /><br />Your article goes a long way to demonstrating this but falls short on this one critical point.<br /><br />Cheers From Down Under<br />Greg Gillespie<br />CEO of HeliumSEOGreg Gillespiehttp://www.heliumseo.com.aunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-26864122306057403492009-11-09T15:29:37.336-08:002009-11-09T15:29:37.336-08:00You could have included site structure and spidera...You could have included site structure and spiderability for the on site SEO, but a really well written guide much better than most 500 words articles that don't say anything! Great stuff!Costa Rica Surfinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11662067936980904213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-31637727604510488182009-11-09T14:26:38.070-08:002009-11-09T14:26:38.070-08:00@Eric - great to have you stop by.
@Alon - Does t...@Eric - great to have you stop by.<br /><br />@Alon - Does that give much in the way of Google Juice? I've not really found it all that helpful, but maybe I'm missing it.Tony Karrerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-79090538935685720842009-11-09T14:16:05.158-08:002009-11-09T14:16:05.158-08:00Great recap Tony. Though I think another good star...Great recap Tony. Though I think another good starting step is submission of media such as press releases, articles and whitepapers to free databases. It'll give you instant results for search terms that are your startup's name and provide some incoming links immediately. Not the best quality incoming links, but a good start.Alonhttp://www.odijoo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-28786365466029120892009-11-09T08:27:34.199-08:002009-11-09T08:27:34.199-08:00Awesome advice. Great post Tony.Awesome advice. Great post Tony.Eric Greenspanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05375812067472361959noreply@blogger.com