On Thursday, February 17th Kuno Creative's Director of Social Media and Search Marketing teamed up with Jeremy Dearringer, Co-founder & Chief Research Officer at Slingshot SEO, to present "Building Leads with SEO." Because the presentation ran a little long we were unable to answer all of the questions presented to us.
Below are the six thought-provoking questions we missed.
Q: Talk about the architecture (technical) of a good blog. Where should it go on your site? Homepage? Format (layout)?
A: Since I’m not a developer I can’t speak to the technical aspects of blogs. However, well known and heavily used blog platforms such as Wordpress, Joomla, Hupspot, etc. should cover most if not all of the technical requirements for SEO. The beauty of a blog is that all of the content shouldn’t be more than three levels (clicks) from the home page of the blog (in theory). If your blog resides on an existing website than all blog content shouldn’t be more than 4 levels from the website’s home page.
Make sure that blog articles link to relevant content in the website (especially deep content – 4+ levels or clicks) in order to assure Google finds all of your pages. Make sure that the blog is not only on the homepage, but that it is easily found by website visitors. The format of your blog should mirror popular blogs on the Internet. I recommend mirroring the blog layout of HubSpot, Search Engine Land or SEOmoz.
Image Credit: TJ Ryan
Q: I have a blog on my website now. It works for me in that I can add fresh content to my site. The problem is that there is no rss feed. I just got a new blog from Wordpress. I will be posting and backlinking from the new one to my site for SEO. My question is what should I do with my old blog? I'm afraid if I stop using it Google will punish me because my content will not be fresh or updated every week like it is now. Should I copy the content from my new blog to my site blog, or could I get punished for duplicate content. I really don't have time to write 2 blogs with different content.
A: I do not recommend that you duplicate your content. Make sure that each blog is unique. Ideally you’d want to write unique content for each. Since you don’t have the time, one way you could do it is by republishing other people’s posts on your Wordpress blog. However, you’ll want to get their permission first. A successful example of this is B2CMarketingInsider.com. One half of their content is original and the other half is syndicated from other blogs with permission. They do fantastic in search.
Image Credit: Mike_Valli
Q: Does that suggestion - to include videos, and animations within your blog, to encourage sharing - apply to B2B blogs too?
A: Absolutely! The B2B and B2C distinction is false in this case. Companies (B2B or B2C) employ people and we know people are actively seeking solutions to their problems online while sharing quality content that solves problems and/or entertains. Whether or not the content source is B2B or B2C is irrelevant. Make sure your videos and animations are geared towards solving your potential customer’s problems.
Image Credit: Jeremy Brooks
Q: If a company url has little traffic and no brand equity (outside of being the same as the company email address) but a PR 3, some decent inbound links, and an old domain should you keep the URL and put the new site on it or put the new page on a more brand relevant URL and 301 the old URL to the new?
A: That’s a tricky one because Google recalculates Page Rank (PR) every three months. Depending on when Google calculated your page rank last your site could have a higher PR. I’d rather know how many backlinks you currently have and their PR.
Also, the decision to use a new URL would have to be driven by your keyword workshop. If you have a keyword phrase that would be very valuable to your website you should consider a URL of “keywordprase.com.” Depending on how many backlinks you have on the current URL this strategy may usurp any benefits you’re currently experiencing from your inbound links.
With that said, you’ll still want to create an SEO migration plan. This plan will require you to go into Google Webmaster Tools and identify all of the links you currently have and where they point to. This will tell you what pages need redirects in order to keep all of your links. However, according to Jeremy Dearringer at Slingshot SEO, expect to lose 25% of the link juice you previously enjoyed.
Image Credit: leshoward
Q: What's a good source to help explain to clients what SEO is, what it can do for them, and that it’s not dead!
A: I’m glad you asked Kit! Kuno’s SEO cheat sheet explains what SEO is and gives five very good reasons why your clients should use it. I’d also recommend downloading Jeremy’s Forrester Research slide from the “Building Leads with SEO” webinar in order to highlight to your clients that SEO is not dead.
Image Credit: brionv
Q: I'm a one-person marketing department; where do I start and what can I work on regularly?
A: The first thing I would do is a keyword workshop. You’ll want to make sure you know what your potential customers are typing in. After that I would make sure your website has its on-page SEO factors dialed in and that you’ve defined an SEO convention for future content. If you need assistance I’d contact an SEO agency or freelancer to help you sculpt your on-page factors based on a proper keyword workshop.
Once that is done you’ll want to blog, blog and blog some more. Blog at least three times per week. Make sure you’re engaging in social media and sharing your blog content, but don’t forget the social media rules of engagement. This process will build links back to your website naturally. After that I would follow Jeremy’s “Links: Essential for SEO” slide from the “Building Leads with SEO” webinar.
Image Credit: George Eastman House
Neal Sherk
Aaron Mandelbaum
Chris Theisen
Kit Wessendorf
Rand Johnson
