Here’s the awesome presentation I mentioned:
The Evolution of Google’s Rankings
View more presentations from randfish.
And here’s the blog post on SEOmoz, with a few more SEO presentations.
And here’s our helpdesk, that I also talked about.
Question of the week:
Cheers,
Please leave a comment below.
Note that I don’t reply to all comments, but I do read them all. If I don’t reply to your comment, it most likely means that I agree with what you say and don’t have anything meaningful to add, myself. I appreciate and read all comments and your comments play an important part in what I write about, so keep them coming.
Spammy comments are always filtered or removed. No surprise there.
Note that I don’t reply to all comments, but I do read them all. If I don’t reply to your comment, it most likely means that I agree with what you say and don’t have anything meaningful to add, myself. I appreciate and read all comments and your comments play an important part in what I write about, so keep them coming.
Spammy comments are always filtered or removed. No surprise there.
I would probably buy expired domain traffic as a quick emergency measure; secondly, I would look closely into options like certain media buys and third, non-G PPC.
Expired domain traffic is an interesting approach. It could perhaps be classified as an “overlooked traffic source”.
If SEO/Google traffic became unattainable tomorrow, what would you do?
Hello Shane,
I would switch to one or more service based businesses as follows: Designing, building and updating web sites and WordPress installations. Creating professional original content videos for web sites. Offer a research services for creating written content for web site owners. All of these skills I have become really good at by learning how to obtain traffic through SEO so ironically the very skills needed to attract SEO traffic that was my source of income would turn into the source of my new income. Interesting how life works isn’t it?
Charles
That’s quite interesting indeed. It’s a very good point: there’s quite a skillset in all the things you tend to do when building niche sites.
If SEO traffic vanished we’d all be taking twitter etc very seriously and building the biggest outreach possible with all social media we could and building a mailing list.
Your own mailing list is the most reliable source of traffic and is how most of the “Gurus” make their money even while pushing crazy products at us with various fictional characters making money in other ways.
My interpretation of the Panda Update is – less competition for me.
:-)
Tx for the heads up about the SEOmoz presentations.
Alex
Yeah, having your own traffic source is great stuff. It’s probably where I’d put my main focus as well, if SEO weren’t an option.
>:) I would start offering paid traffic management services.
I wasn’t aware that you’re into paid traffic. But yeah, if you can play with someone else’s money, that’s an advantage. :)
I would of course outsource that kind of business… I’m not that into paid traffic.
I just meant to say that when everyone starts panicking about losing their SEO traffic, the market status could be exploited by offering paid traffic services, selling paid traffic- or alternative free traffic -products, etc. ^^
I would bury my head in the sand and lament “Woe is me”
Commendable approach. Although you’d probably get sand in your mouth… :D
I would develop forum interaction traffic more. Forums are like a fly-on-the-wall guide to users/consumers real needs and problems. Great market research from people who tell it like it is.
Solve their woes and you write your oewn cheque.
If SEO/Google traffic became unattainable tomorrow, what would you do?
Take a step back and re-evaluate. I am certain new avenues would open to fill those closed.
I wouldn’t know because I don’t use Google. After I compared the converts of MSN/Bing traffic to the big G, I found the later had less convert. I find PPC is a nice way to find out what niches and keywords work, which SEO traffic isn’t needed for.
In short, no skin off my back.
I would get into paid traffic and media buys. That does have a different skill set and a learning curve but then again if you can get conversions, its good.
I’d say it’s a skill just like SEO, except that mistakes are more costly.
But you keep at it and keep learning and eventually, you’ll know your way around media buys or any kind of paid traffic source and see results.
After I cry “Foul! Those S.O.B’s don’t play fair and pull the rest of my hair out … I’m thinking local marketing might still be doable, even if the Big G dumped on all of us. I’m going to start buying local domains for keywords, build traffic and see if I can at least do some co-ops in the future.
I too like the expired domain traffic idea, and, I would focus on increasing my marketing efforts with reporters and media outlets.
TJ
Shane:
How accurate are Google’s competition figures? They seem to bounce around.
Thanks.
Steve
Hi Steve,
What do you mean by Google’s competition figures? The AdWords competition level? That depends on how many people are bidding on a keyword and I guess that can change quite a bit.
Hi Shane
Were you at the SEOMoz link building seminar in London a couple of weeks ago?
That is where I first saw the slides you are discussing.
If Google traffic disappeared I would continue to get direct traffic, from links on topic relevant blogs, forums and other related sites. I try to plan for the worst so I assume Google will disappear tomorrow and I try to have 2 or 3 other areas for traffic generation.
Sean
Dear Mr. Melaugh:
Thursday, March 31st, 2011 at 2:02 hours Yokohama, Japan
I wish I could feel more sanguine about winging it with prosaic or clever alternatives to SEO WP site building but somehow I don’t feel your Q is the right Q to ask, eventhough I realize that it has spurred beaucoup commentary in this thread.
What would be better-in my view- is to go through the 57 slides and to tease out the salient points. In other words what are the takeaways re best practices for imimpact marketers for 2011 on a practical actionable, duplicable level?
I tried to see the details from the slide show and on the SEOMOZ site itself but it still was hard to clearly identify the trend lines in some of the graphs, although I could tell that Ezine articles has taken a nosedive.
And while you say not to panic about this branding talk it is hard not to be a tiny bit alarmed given all the time it takes to do long tail keyword site creation in the first place, not to mention the (monthly) expenses for great tools like SECockpit and Backlink Battleplan + alpha.
Probably the best way to go is toward “modified” authority sites. But what is a “modified” authority site exactly?
I’d like to know the road map involved in doing this step-by-step in a time efficient manner. In other words, I’d like a road map for 20 hours of work or x hours ? to get a half way decent result. By result I mean being fully fledged ready to fly and able to make it up the Google organics to the bottom of page 1.
Perhaps we could also look at it another way?
A best practice way to set up wp blogs for Amazon physical products which by definition have to be mini sites since the products/models change so frequently and another “way” for quasi evergreen info affiliate products and a last “way” for sites where the webmaster/mistress has a home grown product to sell?
In any event, I really don’t want to get back into deep branding with all the corporate mumbo jumbo…that’s what I am trying to escape from by starting a home business in the first place. There should be a place online for elevated C to C or solopreneur to consumer.
So for those of us who have jumped into the SEO pond looking to develop a suite of skills
that are of some value online…could you just take a gander at
chart slide 32 pie chart breakdown for 2011 which compares to 2010 by color code. What does “domain-level keyword agnostic” really mean in terms of imimpact implementation, for example ? or “page level social metrics?”
Naturally, some marketers are going to take a Content Farm excuse to gin up yet another course that will have hours of video and pdfs to go through before the readee can actually implement anything.
I really appreciate all you have done for me and value your content highly.
One of these days the rainbow will appear.
Best wishes,
PV = Present Value a.k.a. Pepper Valston