If you missed this week’s #ContentWritingChat, you’re in luck! We have rounded-up some of the best tweets from our chat on Tuesday, February 9th at 10 AM CST. Ready to dive in and learn more about SEO? Keep reading!
#ContentWritingChat February 9 2016 Recap: SEO in 2016 and Beyond with Jeff Deutsch
Jeff is super knowledgeable in SEO. He joined our chat to share his expertise on the best SEO practices you should be using. We were so excited to have him joining us!
As Jeff and our CEO, Julia, pointed out, SEO is about optimizing your content for search engines. You want Google to view your content as relevant and authoritative in order to rank higher in search results.
Jeff also gives us a very important reminder about making sure you’re writing for humans. Google’s algorithms keep getting better and better and you want to keep up – and this is a key way.
Kavita mentioned the importance of keywords in her answer. Make sure you’re selecting the right keywords for your content. Use keywords that people are actually searching for so you can reach them. Include keywords in your post title, throughout your content, and in the alt tags for your images.
Don’t forget to think beyond keywords, too. Netvantage brings up a great point about making sure your website is optimized. Google favors websites that are mobile-friendly and have quick loading times.
If it wasn’t already obvious by the answers from Jeff, Kavita, and Netvantage Marketing, picking the right keywords is essential! You want to target the keywords your audience is actually searching, otherwise you cannot expect them to find your content. Kavita added a great tip which is to make sure you’re including your focus keyword in your post title, throughout the post itself, and in the alt tags for your images. Very important!
However, don’t forget to think beyond keywords. Netvantage Marketing reminds us the importance of having an optimized website. Google favors websites that are mobile-friendly and ranks them higher in search results. You also want to have faster page-loading times because that’s a good thing to Google!
Follow the advice from Jeff and Ryan and make sure all of your content is relevant and authoritative. High-quality content is key first and foremost!
Try asking yourself Jeff’s question the next time you’re writing, “Would an expert on this subject link to this?” If not, you might want to step it up!
Jeff and Julia provided great answers for this question! Storytelling is important for building a connection between you and your reader. That kind of connection is memorable to your readers and is going to make them want to share your work.
Focus on building a stronger relationship with your readers to grow your brand.
To naturally earn links for SEO, focus on providing quality content for your audience. When you create valuable content for your audience, they’ll want to share it. As Jeff pointed out, be known as “that guy” or “that woman” within your niche. Position yourself as an authority figure for whatever it is you do. Become to go-to person everyone knows and trusts.
Andrew also reminds us that while great content can earn links on its own, promotion is important. Don’t forget to spread the word about what you’ve created.
Jeff offers a great tip here! If you have a piece that you want major influencers in your niche to see, contact them! It may seem scary, but it’s worthwhile to just put yourself out there. You never know who might be willing to share your work so it’s worth a shot!
Michael mentioned the importance of connecting with your audience. Building that relationship with them is key because they’ll be more likely to share your content when you do.
Don’t forget the hashtags, too! Use the hashtags you known your target market is using so they will be more likely to discover your work. It’s a simple way to reach new people.
Don’t fall for any of those bad or outdated SEO practices! Take Michael’s advice and ditch the robotic copy. Focus on writing great content and working your keywords in naturally. No keyword stuffing either because you don’t want Google to think you’re spam.
Julia offers a great point when she said you should think about your reader. Your reader comes first so make sure you’re providing them with valuable content they’ll love. When you do, they’ll keep coming back for more.
We sat down – virtually, of course – with acclaimed author and SEO marketer Jeff Deutsch, author of the viral Inbound post Confessions of a Google Spammer (which hit over 160,000 views and 90k+ Facebook shares). He gave us some awesome, original insights on SEO basics for current marketers in 2015 (and beyond). It’s a read any online marketer should take the time to make.
Commence Jeff’s insights in 3, 2, 1…
Tell us a little about how and why you got started in SEO.
I’ve always dreamed of changing the world through mind control. As an introvert, SEO seemed like the best way to approach it. I probably got the dream from my dad. He was a pretty prolific writer. When I was 8 years old, he taught me how to hypnotize people. He used to proudly tell me stories about how, in college at Columbia in the 1950s, he would make his (pretty, female) subjects regress to memories from the womb—and beyond. I thought that was pretty cool.
Thousands of years ago in the 1960s, writers had to publish their stuff on things called books. My dad, Ronald M. Deutsch, wrote a bunch of them.
In college, I majored in political science. Because I thought they were going to teach me how to do mind control on a mass scale. (Spoiler alert: They didn’t.) So I tried doing it on my own. My first experiment came in 2003. At the time, the debate was raging on the need for war in Iraq. I was fervently against it. I had carefully collated all the projections on how many lives would be lost and money spent. Then I put up a website with the facts. Then I advertised the website by stapling and taping hundreds of bright lemon yellow flyers all over the conservative, war-hungry streets of New Orleans. The next day, I saw most of my flyers had been torn down during the night. My anti-war website got no traffic. That was the first time it dawned on me how important it is to have a reliable source of traffic that other people can’t easily take down. I wish I could say I started doing SEO back then, because man! It was easy back then. Unfortunately, I only started to figure it out in 2008, when I was doing marketing for a company in Beijing that had virtually no budget. By 2010, I had started my own little SEO company in Plainsboro, New Jersey, in an attempt to escape the Beijing pollution and relocate myself and my then-pregnant wife to the U.S. The relocation failed, but the SEO succeeded in a big way.
How big have SEO basics changed since the day you started out in SEO compared to today?
Nowadays, it takes a LOT more money, charisma, or tech skills to start an SEO agency. Today’s SEO basics are a lot different that yesterday’s.
Photo credit Social Media Explorer
Back in 2010, anyone with limited tech skills and the right cheat-sheet could easily start a successful SEO agency on a $1200 budget. I even wrotea post about it on backlinksforum.com if you want to know the details. But the basic concept was building parasite backlinks using spun content and force indexing them. If you don’t recognize those terms, never mind. They’re not going to help with SEO for the big money keywords these days anyway. However, I talked to some guys at one SEO agency at Opticon and according to them—amazingly—these methods STILL work for very low competition keywords. They use them to rank for reputation management clients’ names. But they are the exception to the rule. Most successful agencies these days have the money, charisma, or tech skills to have a comparative advantage over you and me. They gobble up all the keywords (and clients… and money…) by combining that advantage with the scaling power of automation and social media to force the Gini coefficient of SEO ever upwards closer to 1.0.
Money SEO agencies
These guys just buy links on high PR guest blogs like HuffingtonPost, or buy whole sites on Flippa to turn into pumpers or feeders, or pay to build a big ole PBN. They have the resources to reverse engineer their competitors’ backlink profiles and outbid them on quality link placement.
Profile: Think in-house link buyers for online casinos. Zodiac sign: Taurus. Star Wars equivalent: Think Senator Lott Dod, Minister of the Trade Federation. D&D counterpart: A NEUTRAL EVIL human rogue.
Charisma SEO Agencies
These people know how to network, be popular and get tight with high traffic sites. And get them to link to their creative content. Which they know people will like because they extrovertedly talk talk talk to everyone.
Profile: Think inbound marketers like Dharmesh Shah, Neil Patel, Joel Klettke. Zodiac sign: Libra. Star Wars equivalent: Queen Padmé Amidala. D&D counterpart: A LAWFUL GOOD half-elf bard.
Tech Skill SEO Agencies
These folks know how to automate outreach and find loopholes to rank and bank. Mostly these guys are pretty agnostic about the method, and only care about the result, so it’s hard to label them “white hat” or “black hat.” If, for example, they develop a WP plugin that gets them cloaked links, and they only rank reputable sites, who are they hurting really? Or maybe they develop the scripts to find high value expired domains with aged backlinks to build PBNs or 3BNs. The main thing is that they are mavericks who zig when everyone else zags, and they almost assuredly rock the pants off PHP, Python, Ruby, or all three.
Profile: Think Justin Mares fromProgrammingForMarketers.com and any SEOs on StackExchange.com. Zodiac sign: Aquarius. Star Wars equivalent: Han Solo. D&D counterpart: A CHAOTIC NEUTRAL halfling swashbuckler.
By the way, as you can see from my $1200 guide above, back in 2010 people like me used to hand out actionable, effective SEO basics advice on forums for free all the time.
Those days are over.
Nobody does that anymore for The Three Reasons People Don’t Publicly Share Effective SEO Tactics Anymore.
Photo credit SERoundtable.com
The Three Reasons People Don’t Publicly Share Effective SEO Tactics Anymore
Google’s anti-spam team reads the forums to find and close loopholes the way agents in the Matrix popped into people’s bodies.
SEO is a zero-sum game. There will always only be 10 spots on the first page of Google and a scarcity of high value, low competition keywords. It doesn’t make sense for me to help people compete with me.
Any SEO who outs a privately known method for ranking is shunned by his community.
Instead of talking publicly on forums, SEOs now trade secrets privately and carefully on platforms that Google’s anti-spam team is less likely to be able to monitor, like Skype. So you can imagine how important it is to have SEO buddies these days. This will not be the first time I mention that in this interview. My biggest regret after my link building empire crumbled was that I hadn’t spent more time developing relationships with SEOs. The people who did that, like Matthew Woodward, Terry Kyle, and Alex Becker, will keep making money no matter what algorithm change Google throws at them. Remember the catchphrase from V for Vendetta–“ideas are bullet-proof”? Well in SEO, human relationships are algorithm-proof.
What’s one piece of advice you would give someone just starting out learning SEO basics?
If you have lots of money, charisma, or tech skills, just do like the people do above. If not, get an entry-level SEO job or apprentice to a successful SEO. Learning what works through experimentation takes too long. Paying for what works is too expensive. Build a network of friends on a Skype-like platform and talk to them as often as possible. Trade up on secrets the way Kyle MacDonaldtraded up from a red paperclip to a house. For those of you who are thinking “aw what a let-down, he didn’t tell me the secret right now!” Re-read The Three Reasons People Don’t Publicly Share Effective SEO Tactics Anymore repeatedly until you get it.
Do SEO and content marketing tie in today? How important do you feel content marketing is to SEO?
If you’re going the charisma route, content marketing is everything. For the other two, it’s only absolutely critical. Look at how Hayden from NoHatDigital.com is using his awesome IM blog to build a worldwide niche site intern army (directed by an oligarchy operating out of a mansion in Mexico.) When you start making good content, use it to attract friendships and talk talk talk to your network as much as possible. They’ll tell you what works in SEO basics, behind the scenes.
What’s one tip you’d offer for someone who’s looking to boost SEO rankings on their existing site?
Never, ever, ever (did we say never?) think of SEO like this… Photo credit searchengineland.com
Get on SEO forums, meet people by proving you can provide value, and make friendships. Get on Skype (or some other non-Google monitored IRC platform) and trade up on SEO secrets like the red paperclip guy. Oh and, never out your best secrets of successful SEO basics on a public forum (like this blog post.) 😛
We love the content you share on Inbound.org! Thanks for being a great inspiration in SEO.
Thanks!
And Finally, Check It Out: Jeff’s Awesome Offer For You (Yes, You The Reader!)
One last thing. Like I said earlier, human relationships are algorithm-proof. I’d like to build a relationship with everyone who enjoyed this interview. And I have the perfect first step. It’s one of those “once-in-a-lifetime type opportunities.” Literally. It has to do with something called CRO. Remember that I wish I’d gotten into SEO in 2003? In 5 years people will be lamenting not getting into CRO “back in 2015.” Why is it important? Well, doing SEO without CRO is like burying a treasure chest in quicksand. CRO converts visitors into leads, buyers, subscribers, whatever. And it’s also not dependent on Google algorithms. That’s why I started working for a company that makes an awesome CRO tool.
Right now I get to give away 5 lifetime Enterprise level licenses for Ptengine, which normally cost $300 a month. Even better, I get to work with the winners to help them get more conversions per visit. And I don’t have to charge them $0.01. All you have to do is work with me to create a case study about our success that we can put on our website. Interested applicants should email me at jeff.deutsch@ptengine.com to apply. Just let me know what your website’s domain name and about how much traffic it gets.
Who Is This Jeff Guy?
Jeff Deutsch is the VP of Marketing for Ptengine, a tool made by people who are obsessed with making your visitors stop abandoning your website. (He seriously wants you to email him at jeff.deutsch@ptengine.com so he can help you for free. He’ll explain after you email him.) He works out of Tokyo and Beijing and the Bay Area. In his spare time he contributes to Inbound.org and HubSpot’s blog.
Joshua McCoy is our company COO and our all-around developer and web guru. Read more on the About page.
Did you hear about this story yet?
Chances are, if you’ve made any kind of rounds on the internet, you already have.
After years of being a massively successful link builder who made upwards of $50,000 each month by spamming Google, marketer Jeff Deutsch realized that he was building homes on the dark side of the moon.
I started out in SEO around 2010, and although many marketers around me did, I never followed suit and went the black hat way. I stayed white hat and inbound marketing friendly ever since I started out (which is why my role at our content agency, Express Writers, fits me perfectly). Yet, I know enough of the “dark” realms to have major respect for someone like Jeff telling his past as a black hat this transparently.
The iconic image below was all too perfect for the crazy tale that subsequently fetched 150,000 views and over 94,000 shares alone on Facebook.
He didn’t quit black hat SEO because the income wasn’t good or the lifestyle pleasant (quite the opposite, as Jeff details).
It was because the SEO model he had created was impossible to maintain in the face of increased awareness about link builders and aggressive Google programs like Panda and Penguin.
In Deutsch’s powerful confession piece, “Confessions of a Google Spammer,” the author chronicles his rise and subsequent downfall as a black hat link-builder. He transparently allows readers see the ugly truth of how the life of a professional, black hat SEO can quickly spiral out of control, becoming a merciless and often empty money-machine that leaves the spammer devoid of real skills or knowledge of white hat tactics.
When his link-building business begins to fail, Deutsch becomes anxious and addicted and realizes that he is ill suited to survive in the post-de-indexing world.
After a hellish 18 months, he finally realizes that to be truly white hat, he needs to cross over into the world of inbound marketing and high-quality content instead of continuing to run on the “anxiety-inducing treadmill of using black hat SEO to get traffic.”
Although this story may seem anecdotal, it is more than just a come-to-SEO-Jesus moment.
9 Lies SEO Marketers Like To Tell Themselves (And Stay Comforted In Their Sleep)
This story is a perfect example of how SEO’s often tell themselves things that involve the following nine lies, which lead not only to their personal downfalls, but also to the mucking-up of the entire SEO industry.
1) My latest hack will fall below Google’s radar yet again
Although there are loopholes in every system, Google is a particularly good one and with developments in de-indexing as well as programs like Panda and Penguin, it’s highly unlikely that a hack will evade Google’s radar for long.
What’s more, once Google catches on, there is a solid chance that the hacker is in for a rapid de-escalation of lifestyle like the one Detusch experienced after his $100,000 per month business was lost to de-indexing.
2) Those tiered links won’t get figured out anytime soon
Since tiered link building is a decidedly black hat technique and search engines are on a mission to destroy black hat techniques, it’s a safe bet that tiered links won’t work the way SEO’s want them to.
Google’s algorithm relies on at least 200 ranking factors arranged in order of their impact on total rank with contextual links being the crème de la crème of the linking world. Not only does tiered linking not work but it is likely to be found out due to the fact that a large number of low-quality links throws out a huge number of negative metrics, which acts as a footprint for Google’s spam filters, which are now built specifically to obliterate spam-filled tiered links.
3) My pyramid linking scheme still works
Pyramid linking is a risky business and since it is so intrinsically reliant upon wobbly pillars like tiered links and ongoing hacks, it is liable to crumble and, when it does, the SEO is in deep trouble.
Once again, one needs only to turn to Deutsch’s article for an example of this. After the Authority Link Network began to crumble, Deutsch found himself in the position of watching his clients loose their clients and so on and so forth. Although a pyramid seems like it might touch the sky, there is no way for the top to stay intact when the bottom begins to crumble.
4) I can post crappy content that a $5 Fiverr gig author wrote
Content is king, as it turns out, and there’s really no way to get around this fact. Nowadays, crappy content sticks out like a sore thumb and Google doesn’t appreciate spammers who add millions of words of spam to its index.
As a result, there have been several updates to the system that are designed specifically to target cheap, spammy content. With increasing focus on high-quality content and strong, white-hat links, it’s gotten harder and harder for crappy content to rise through the ranks.
5) I still think I can succeed with .gov links
Links are an important topic to white- and black-hat SEO’s alike but the essential difference lies in the type of link being used. Links can either help or hurt SEO or simply be ignored altogether by search engines. .Gov links happen to fall into the latter camp.
White certain types of .gov links can be beneficial to SEO ranking, they do not often rank as high as other types of links. The reason for this is that, historically, black hat SEO’s have used .gov and .edu links to lend false authority to their spammy content and, like it always does, Google caught on.
6) My article spinner isn’t broken
Simply put, article spinning is poor form for any SEO and, as search engines continue to evolve, the use of article spinning software continues to become a worse idea. One of the main reasons for this is that article spinners produce amazingly awful content, often resulting in unreadable or garbled articles that negatively affect SEO ranking.
As article spinning became more and more popular, Google responded by creating Panda, a software that is designed specifically to de-index sites that feature low-quality content and spun articles so, in addition to being ill advised and unethical, there’s a solid chance that today’s spun articles won’t even get past Google’s spam filters.
7) ScrapeBox is still my BFF
Although ScrapeBox can very occasionally be helpful in legitimate link building, it is primarily a spam services that allows black hat SEO’s to scrape links, mine Wordpress, leave keyword-laden anchor text comments on blogs and drive traffic to low-quality money sites.
Like many other black hat SEO techniques, Google and other search engines are on the lookout for ScrapeBox spam tactics and as the digital world continues to evolve, it is becoming more and more likely that ScrapeBox content will not make it through spam filters.
8) I don’t need to conform to all of Google’s latest changes
Yes, you do. Google’s latest changes have been instated for the sole purpose of raising the content bar and ensuring that the links, websites and pages that show up in search results are high-quality and authoritative. Failing to adhere to these changes means that your content will consistently rank low or be flagged as spam.
9) MozBar’s DA is the greatest authority metric there is
While MozBar’s DA can be a helpful authority metric, it is by no means the golden standard. A great example of this truth is the fact that Moz’s last index accidentally included 24 billion Chinese spam domains, which served to artificially inflate DA rakings across the board.
Although Moz is a company that certainly attempts to do its best to provide a reputable DA source to writers and SEO, DA scales with spam and Moz, like many other software platforms, is not immune to spam.
Throughout the course of digital history, many SEO’s have been tempted to cross over to the dark side. By telling themselves lies about why and how they spam as well as who is truly benefiting or suffering at the hands of the spam, black hat SEO’s have managed to get by for a number of years, contributing crappy content to Google’s indexes and mucking up the waters for the white hat SEO’s among us.
Fortunately, those days are slowly coming to an end. As Detusch’s article points out, black hat SEO techniques and the lies that go along with them are ultimately not sustainable and, in this current “content is king” era, they are being obliterated by enhanced search engines and spam filters on a daily basis. The Internet has spoken and the cries for high-quality content, inbound linking strategies and authoritative domain links have been heard, loud and clear.
Because of this, we’ve reached an era in which SEO lies no longer hold up under the pressure of the actual market and black hat SEO’s will ultimately find that, in order to build a successful business model, the focus needs to be on content and ethical linking practices.
Fortunately, the SEO community gets a bit closer to this reality every day and internet users, writers, SEO’s and content marketers will soon be able to reside in an internet world that is (largely) free of content spam and the SEO lies that fuel it.
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