Ask Me Any SEO Question!

[MrJohn]

This is your shot to ask an SEO professional any SEO question that you want! I am creating this thread to help out as many people as I can with their SEO (search engine optimization). Ask me your question, and I will answer it to the best of my ability. :great:

Hopefully this can be used as a resource for future forum owners.

 

[Pvt_Tracy]

I already know what SEO is and what it is about, I just don't know what the best way to go to get it implemented for a site and forum like mine. My host includes an SEO installer but It just seems so confusing to me. What would be a few simple things I could do just to start with? Just click my sig to go to site and forum, I am in the middle of changing the looks of it.

 

[MrJohn]

I already know what SEO is and what it is about, I just don't know what the best way to go to get it implemented for a site and forum like mine. My host includes an SEO installer but It just seems so confusing to me. What would be a few simple things I could do just to start with? Just click my sig to go to site and forum, I am in the middle of changing the looks of it.

Well, you look like you are more or less starting from scratch. This would be the first few things that I would do that should have you headed in the right direction.

Step 1: Keyword Research

You need to find out which keywords/phrases you want to rank for and which ones are going to be easiest to rank for. Phrases/keywords with more than one word are ideal, as one word keywords are just too hard to rank for, it can take years and years. You can use Google's Free Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool to figure out how many keywords related to your topic are getting how many searches monthly. Make sure you check the box with "Search terms related to mine" or whatever it says. You should also go down the left and side and make sure broad is unchecked and exact is checked. Then search through the local searches and find a keyword that fits the topic of your forum that gets around 500-2000 exact searches monthly.

Step 2: On-page Optimization

Then you are going to take those 1 or 2 keywords/phrases that you found with your research and implement them on your website's home page. You should put them once in the page title, once in the meta description, and once or twice on the page. This is letting Google know that this is what your page is about.

Step 3: Link Building

Now you want to build links back to your site from other sites. While you are doing this, you should see yourself start to move up the Google rankings for the term/phrase that you selected. I use this tool to check where I am at on the rankings:

http://www.seoserp.com/web_tools/google ... hecker.asp


I hope this gives you at least some sort of direction. If you want to learn more about the basics of SEO I suggest going to SEOmoz.org, they have a plethora of resources from beginner all of the way up to expert. Good luck with your site.

 

[Pvt_Tracy]

Thank you, that is a lot simpler than that SEO add-on that comes with most cPanels anymore.

 

[MrJohn]

Thank you, that is a lot simpler than that SEO add-on that comes with most cPanels anymore.

There are a lot more factors that go into it, but that is the basics. No problem at all. 🙂

 

[idrivethetaxi]

how long does it take to start seeing search results??? we have been working on it for several weeks with minimal results

 

[Moneyman]

Hey, just one little question: are there any ways to get your first members?

 

[D]

Hey, just one little question: are there any ways to get your first members?

Forums like this one (FP) are a great way to get your first members and content, You could also try postloop.<br /><br />-- 28 Sep 2012, 00:27 --<br /><br />

how long does it take to start seeing search results??? we have been working on it for several weeks with minimal results

It depends how you push your content out there and "promote it", It is useless having lots of content but nothing really linking back to it.

 

[MrJohn]

Sorry that I wasn't around to reply. Luckily ShadyX was here, who does have quite a bit of experience with forums and online promotion. He is right about Forum Promotion. As far as waiting for results, you should never be waiting. Just keep pushing and you will see them in time. If you are sitting there waiting for something to happen, you are going to be waiting for a long time. Instead spend that time going over how you can make your forum or site better SEO wise and for your users.

 

[jimmytran]

How many ways of link building do you often use?

 

[Sam]

Do .me and .biz domains rank lower than the main TLDs in general?

 

[MrJohn]

How many ways of link building do you often use?

Sorry for the late response, but I like to use as many different legitimate ways of link building as possible. I will start by analyzing where I want my traffic to come from. I reach out to other website owners and get them to link back to my website. But this also means you have to have something on your website worth linking back to. Like great content, a free tool, or other resources.

You can also reach out via social media, and through multimedia. There really is no limit to link building as long as you are willing to put in the work.

Do .me and .biz domains rank lower than the main TLDs in general?

The domain extensions do not matter as far as Google is concerned when determining your rank in their search results. Anyone that tells you different is wrong.

 

[Fergal]

JohnTheSEOGuy what suggestions would you have to promote http://www.businessadviceforum.com ?

 

[MrJohn]

Well, Fergal, just by looking at your website I can tell that you have put a lot of work into it and that it clearly has a large community already. That being said, I do think you could take it a step further, and really up the SEO and promotion for your website. I would start by either creating a blog that can be used as an excellent business resource, where you can write it or have members of the community pitch in, or you can create some tools to help people that might visit your forum.

Either way, you want to provide your end users with something that they can utilize, and something that they don't mind sharing with others. After all, they are not going to just share a forum because they are that awesome, they have to have a reason why they are sharing it with others.

Then once you have this resource for people to use, you can go out to business and webmaster blogs and let them know about it. This can be through a friendly email. Just introduce yourself, let them know about your resource, and where they can find it. If it is truly something that you have put some work into, the backlinks will come pouring in, which will boost your SEO and your referral traffic at the same time. It really is a win/win.

To me, that would be a lot better than some of the promotion methods that I have seen others use when it comes to the forum world.

John

 

[Fergal]

Thanks for the suggestions John, some good ideas there. However, I don't plan on adding a blog in the short term as I want to focus my time and effort on building the forum.

 

[Moneyman]

Would you please point out the light and tell me some primary steps to promote a very new forum, webmasterconvo.com?

 

[MrJohn]

In your situation, I wouldn't even start with SEO yet, unless it is on-page stuff, which is things that you can change on your website to make sure you rank higher down the road.

I would focus on building your community, as it can really help later on when you dive into SEO. Post exchanges, visiting other webmaster forums that allow you to have a link in your signature, creating link back images to your forum, things like that. Also, create some content on your forum, maybe like some articles or interviews that are aimed at helping webmasters.

Once you have done a few of those, you can begin to build your forum and then move on to SEO. But, like I said, in your situation I would first build up the forum, since it is a competitive niche, then I would later work on SEO, once the forum is busier and has a solid community.

 

[riskymonk]

Hello John nice to know some people out there want to help.

I hear about link building a lot and its about quality not quantity. I downloaded this file 700+ dofollow backlinks" and went through games gadgets and technology related forums. Some forums ive been kicked off for backlinking (even though they allow it) and I can promise I wasn't spamming I was asking and answering genuine questions as Im interested in those subjects.

I downloaded this little tool that tells you whether dofollow is true or false and most sites are false. I dont really know what to do now in terms of building backlinks as I understand its an important part of SEO and I need to backlink as soon as possible.

 

[MrJohn]

Hello John nice to know some people out there want to help.

I hear about link building a lot and its about quality not quantity. I downloaded this file 700+ dofollow backlinks" and went through games gadgets and technology related forums. Some forums ive been kicked off for backlinking (even though they allow it) and I can promise I wasn't spamming I was asking and answering genuine questions as Im interested in those subjects.

I downloaded this little tool that tells you whether dofollow is true or false and most sites are false. I dont really know what to do now in terms of building backlinks as I understand its an important part of SEO and I need to backlink as soon as possible.

Hey Risky,

Believe it or not, I too tried to use that method when I first started building backlinks. Basically it is too good to be true. There is no super easy way to build links, otherwise we would all be millionaires and have successful sites.

That being said, there are plenty of opportunities out there to build links. You want a good mixture of dofollow and nofollow links too. Without seeing your site, I would say to start by finding other reputable sites in your subject. You can ask them to link back to your site in a polite way, just through a friendly PM or email. But remember, your site has to have something awesome to link to, like good content, or something you are offering for free.

You can also do guest posting. Where you go to blogs that have to do with your subject, and then ask them if you can write a blog post for them, and they can post it up on their site. In return, you would like a link back to your site at the bottom of the post.

Things like that are a good place to start, they are a great way to build solid backlinks. One of these solid backlinks will usually be better than most of those quick spam-type links that you find on most lists.

You can also post articles that you have written on Squidoo.com, Ezine Articles, and other article directories as well, with a link back to your website where they let you put one.

These are just some of the options off the top of my head to link build the right way. But, the more work you put into it now, the less you will have to put into it later on.

Best of luck,

John

 

[riskymonk]

Thank you. I've already posted 3 articles on Squidoo from Boxing day onwards but all I did was copy each article from my news and reviews section of the forum and pasted it into Squidoo. Would I get a penalty for duplicate content or can I get away with this?

I'll do the guest posting for a couple of sites too.