11 Ways for Local Businesses to Get Links

Posted by Casey_Meraz

Let's face it: Local link building is hard. Even if you have the budget and resources needed to earn or build links it will take time. Having a strong link profile is essential to your website's success in search engines.

If you're new to link building and want to develop a more in-depth understanding, check out this great resource from MOZ on link building here.

In this guide we will look at 11 practical ways you can start earning links for your local business, which will make an impact on your bottom line today.

Who should care about local link building?

When I talk about local link building I don't mean that these links are for local businesses exclusively. If you're trying to boost the authority of your website, one good way is to get links from locally relevant sources. This guide is for all types of businesses who want to increase their site's link authority.

Since local business types vary from fast food restaurants, to ski rental shops, to law firms, and everything in-between, the tactics below are applicable across the spectrum.

About these links

Some of these links are harder to get than others. While it's easy to start with the low hanging fruit, you should put a plan together to go after the harder ones. These are the links your competitors won't get because they're just too darn lazy. This is how real businesses set themselves apart in the customer's eyes and the search engine's eyes and build a brand that's worth remembering. Aim for quality over quantity and don't settle for crummy links.

How do you define a good link?

I recently read an article by Eric Enge from Stonetemple that summed up what type of links you should be looking for pretty nicely. In this article he mentioned three key points to help define the type of links you're looking for. They were:

1. Links that will drive direct referral traffic
2. Links that build visibility with your target audience for your brand
3. Links that build your reputation

The link building methods I'll be covering today will achieve at least one of the goals each. I always think it's important to "think outside of the link" and the above three points make that practical. In addition to getting the link for an SEO benefit, will it actually drive relevant traffic? If so, that's a great link to chase. The same goes for links built that place you in front of your target audience and links that build your reputation.

Keeping this in mind, lets build some links!

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#1 Create controversy and get in the news

Creating a controversial story may seem hard at first glance, but it reminds me of this quote from Peter Marshall "If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything." If your clients don't have any controversy or a cause to believe in, then they aren't real people.

You can't agree with 100% of the people 100% of the time and you just have to find out what that is. Some companies like Spirit Airlines seem to do this quite often, but the little guys can do this too with minimal investment.

Using this method you can get links from places like:

The Wall Street Journal, The Denver Post and other local newspapers, Lexis Nexis

Actual case study

We were recently working with an attorney who was looking to earn links at a decent scale. We proposed a scholarship contest. While scholarship links from .edus are cool, we like The Wall Street Journal and high authority news site links even more. After speaking with this client, who is a DUI attorney, we discussed how everybody talks about how destructive driving drunk is, but rarely do people admit to the habit.

From this idea, we came up with the concept of a Scholarship for Colorado students who admit to drinking and driving.

After the scholarship information was published on the site, we reached out to our local newspaper, The Denver Post, and informed them of the scholarship. From here, they went on to interview our client and write an article on the topic titled "Scholarship for Colorado students who admit to drinking and driving" that links to the scholarship page.

Once the Denver Post article was published, it was easy to get other major publications to cover the story, including The Wall Street Journal:

How you can do this

Step 1: Develop an idea that strikes a chord with people. Think about issues that are universally familiar and tend to be polarizing in some way.

Step 2: Develop the on-page asset needed to support it. In this case we opted for the scholarship.

Step 3: Once the asset is created, pitch it to a local newspaper.

Step 4: If the story is picked up by a newspaper you can then pitch it to other major publications like The Wall Street Journal. Many websites have contact forms and areas to submit a tip. Something simple like "Hey I thought you guys might find this funny" with a link to the news publication article will do the trick since it adds credibility.

Step 5: Share it on social media with groups that might be interested in the topic.

Step 6: Consider paying for some exposure on Outbrain to widen the audience.

PRO tip: Don't skimp on the content, graphics, or any step in this process. This will be fruitful if done right but will fall flat on your face if you try to take shortcuts.

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#2 Easily get contest nomination links

Almost every city whether big or small has some type of local business awards. The awards might be run by a small local newspaper with a website, the chamber of commerce, or even another organization. In addition to these "Best Of" type awards, there are also awards based on age like Top 40 Under 40 or by type of business including Best Restaurant or Best Law Firm.

The trick is to find the opportunities that are a good fit for your business and get listed. Sometimes you have to win to get mentioned and other times you just need to get nominated.

Get links from places like:

Chamber of commerce, news publications, and major publications if you're good enough :)

Getting a link from the Chamber of Commerce like the example above is very relevant as it only serves businesses within that city. It's also a plus for informed local shoppers.

How you can do it

The best way to find these potentially lucrative links is to do a Google Search. You need to start by coming up with a list of potential sources. Since these are generally city or state specific, it's a good idea to use one of these search strings:

Here are some ideas to get the wheels turning in your brain:

• "Nominate a business"+"STATE NAME" (Example: "Nominate a business"+"Colorado")
• "City Name"+"Nominate a business" (Example: "Los Angeles"+"Nominate a business")
• "best of STATE or CITY"+"nominate" (Example: "best of Colorado"+"nominate")
• "best BUSINESS TYPE"+"nominate"+"city" (Example: "best restaurant"+"nominate"+"denver")
• "AGE under AGE"+"GEO MODIFIER" (Example: "30 under 30"+"Denver")
• "nominate"+"young entrepreneur" (Example: "nominate"+"young entrepreneur)

Once you have curated a list of awards you want to try to apply for you can then send your pitch to each of these websites directly. Typically they have nomination forms that you would fill out or a certain procedure. If you can't find out how, don't be afraid to ask!

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#3 Get eco-friendly links

Is your business green? Does it operate according to low energy standards or are you at least on track to be green? Why not help out the environment and get a link out of it as well? Now while you probably won't show up on Newsweek's America's Greenest Companies 2014 for doing this, there are a lot of offline benefits to being green as well. I already mentioned saving the environment, but did you realize there are eco-friendly shoppers? Some shoppers do the majority of their business with companies that are eco-friendly and I suspect this will just continue to soar.

Get links from places like:

Mostly business directories and local news organizations who promote green businesses.

How you can do it

With this industry there are some low hanging fruits, but just like all link building, you should be smart about your approach. While it might be tempting to go out and get a link on a directory, I would personally spend time scrutinizing it to make sure it's a strong website that's human-edited and controlled. If you don't find it reputable, nobody else will (including Google). That's why it's best to focus on local opportunities such as your local newspaper or community directory.

Make sure to familiarize yourself with the Green Terminology here. Once you have a good idea of what you're looking for, you can conduct some easy searches such as the ones below to find directories. Again, please be sure to scrutinize them.

Search for directories by using search phrases like:

• Eco-friendly business directory
• Green business directories

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#4 Sponsor a meetup group

While of course we're talking about links here, I always like to see the other side of a link and the actual benefit it will give you. Did you know you can sponsor meetup groups and get a link as well as get in front of your potential customers?

Meetup.com is a powerhouse website that connects like minded groups of people together through events they call meetups. If you have a good grasp of your target audience and you know where they hang out, you can get in front of them more easily.

For example, let's say that you're a bike store. Would it make sense to sponsor a local meetup biking club? Yes!

How you can do it

Sponsoring a meetup group does require the group owner to accept your sponsorship and terms. Your goal however is to get your business name, logo, discount, and link in the ad as shown in the example. If you're ambitious and a local store you could ask to have your NAP displayed as well for Local SEO purposes.

Step 1: Start by determining what type of groups might appeal to your audience. I have included some tricky examples below:

• Attorneys - Maybe sponsoring a cycling- or driving-based meetup with the safety approach
• Doctors - Sponsor a healthy living meetup
• Airsoft or Paintball Store - Sponsor a singles group by offering an event
• Construction - Sponsor a charity group or a new homeowners' group

That's enough to get the wheels turning. Write these ideas down and proceed to the next step.

Step 2: Turn to Google to make your search easier! Use the search strings below to only search the meetup.com website with the keywords you're looking for:

site:meetup.com state+keyword or site:meetup.com city+keyword

Step 3: Click through the results and find a meetup group that seems to fit the bill.

Step 4: Show up to the next scheduled local meetup group. Network. Meet the group owner and see if they're seeking sponsorship's.

Step 5: Negotiate and get your site up!

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#5 Host a community event

If you want to do event link building check out my local event link building post here or Kane Jamison's event link post here. While those posts go more into how you can really promote an event and build some awesome local links, I want to talk specifically about how you can get listed on your city's website by hosting a community event. The thing I like most about events is that you get to give back to your community and help people. Not even a link feels as good as that.

The only real requirements for this one is that you host an event where the entire community is invited and get a blessing from the town. In the example below you can see how a church in my town of Parker, Colorado was able to get a link by hosting an Easter Egg Hunt.

So not only are they getting exposure from people in their town (their target audience), they're getting the link and mentions here too. If the event was hosted at your office or business location, then you can get the added superior benefit of your NAP listed on their website!

If it's a county-wide event, you can get listed on the county website and if the event is public safety you might be able to get the Fire Department and Police Departments on board as well. Plus this can come with the added benefit of news coverage.

Get links from places like:

Your city's website and major community news sources

How you can do it

The first thing you need to do is figure out what type of event you want to host. Depending on the size of your town and the size of the event, it can be a big deal. I'm a bit of a event fanatic so for me it comes easy. Don't be afraid to start small though as long as you're creating and providing a productive resource for your community.

Some potential ideas include:

• Trash Pickup Day - Host a trash pickup day where the meeting place is your business or you sponsor the bags.
• Toy Drop off for Needy Kids - Host a toy drive or drop off for kids in need.
• Seminar - Host a seminar in your area of expertise that will be the most beneficial to residents. If you like this idea then also try starting a meetup group (see #4 above).

Step 1: Figure out the event type.

Step 2: Get the town on board with the idea and schedule a date at least 60 days out.

Step 3: Create the details page on your website with all pertinent event details.

Step 4: Make sure it goes up on the town's website with your company event page linked.

Step 5: Promote the heck out of it using the event promotion guide here.

Pro tip 1: Invite local press to your event to cover it. Be sure to meet and greet them and get to know them. More on this later.

Pro tip 2: Invite the local Boy Scouts or other community organizations as well. If their name is attached to the event, you might get more exposure and more link opportunities.

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#6 Sponsor or donate to a local club or organization

Sponsorship links can be a slippery slope, but there's also a place for them. Over the years I have given back to a number of causes I support and have been an active member in charities and nonprofit organizations. Chances are you or someone you know is a part of one right now.

There are a lot of clubs in almost any community. Have you ever heard of the Rotary Club, Kiwanis, Lions Club, etc. These are commonly found in many communities and they typically have state, district, or chapter websites.

Below is a quick example I pulled from the Los Angeles Rotary Club sponsors webpage:

But don't stop there. While the major clubs are popular, there are also a lot of other potential sponsorship causes and organizations. This is commonly touched on so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but here are some easy search stings you can use to find some opportunities.

• "city inurl:sponsors" (Example: Los Angeles inurl:sponsors)
• "city inurl:sponsor" (Example: Los Angeles inurl:sponsor)
• "city intitle:sponsors" (Example: Los Angeles intitle:sponsors)
• keyword donations (Example: Safety donations)

After you have explored these opportunities simply reach out to the organizers and see what type of commitment they're looking for.

Pro tip: Don't be afraid to promote your sponsorship. If you're giving to a good cause, let the community know!

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#7 Student, teacher, and alumni discounts

If you've done link building research you may have heard of the university discount link building where you can offer a discount to the students and faculty of a university. That has a place and it might be a good place for local links if you have a university nearby. But did you realize there are other student discount opportunities as well?

Typically when I look for opportunities locally I open my eyes a little wider and look for other opportunities like:

1. K-12 Schools. These can be goldmines and aren't really talked about much.
2. Organization discounts. Organizations have students too. Take the Colorado Symphony for example.
3. Alumni discounts. Sometimes these organizations also offer alumni listings for free.

Get links from places like:

Organizations, schools, K-12 schools, educational websites

How you can do it

This is another scenario where we will turn to Google and seek opportunities:

• site:.org "student discounts" - Looks for organizations that offer student discounts
• site:.org "high school"+"student Discount" - Checks for offers available to high school students
• site:.edu "staff discounts" - Searches .edu domains for staff discounts (colleges and universities)
• site:.edu "student discounts" - Searches .edu domains for student discounts (colleges and universities)

Pro tip: Don't be afraid to add geo modifiers. Remember that anything in "" will search exactly so plurals should be searched separately.

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#8 Create and promote a local resource

So you want to send good local link signals and showcase you're the expert of a local area? What better way than to create a community resource page on your website? Not only will it attract potential links with the proper marketing, it's also going to show that you're the expert in your area.

The good thing about creating a local resource is that you or the local operator running that location probably already has a good idea about the city in general. Even if they're not the most familiar with the area, some research can solve that.

Get links from places like:

Hotels, travel websites, news organizations

How you can do it

Start by coming up with a list of ideas. Locally-based ideas can vary greatly. Here are a few to helps the mice turn the wheel:

• Best of Local Guides - Best restaurants in the city or county, top bars, top microbreweries (I like beer, OK), top city attractions, top things for singles, top things for families, a perfect day trip for families, etc.
• Local Calendar Creation - Create a local calendar of popular events by topic. High school football calendars, movie premiere dates, HOA meetings, and more.

Once you have the idea, you can move onto the creation of the asset. Notice my use of the word asset. If I'm going to spend the time to create this piece, I want to make sure it's a linkable asset. That means that it should be substantial and also look great. If the content is weak, you're going to get a weak appeal.

Once you have built your guide, the real key is promoting it and getting the exposure you need. Make sure to share it with relevant audiences such as Facebook and Google Plus groups. If there are town groups such as "You know you grew up in CITY, when..." those might be a good place to promote your resource.

Figure out where your community members hang out and post it there. Sometimes even city or town run pages will be willing to post or promote your piece. This is just another reason why you need to create a quality piece of content and not just do the bare minimum.

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#9 Get manufacturer and wholesaler links

This is an easy one that is often overlooked by small businesses. If you operate a retail business or sell a product that somebody else manufactures, then you have a link opportunity. Many product manufacturers want to show their customers where to buy their products. This might be a store locator or it could just be an authorized reseller list. Either way you need to take advantage of it. This is an opportunity that even local businesses can take advantage of quickly.

One of the reasons we have extensive client intake forms is to address this issue. A lot of times clients will say that they're listed without actually knowing. It's best to find out for yourself by getting a complete list of all manufacturers they represent. If they have a website you can get a link.

Get links from places like:

Larger manufacturing companies

How you can do it

Even small stores might represent products from 100+ different manufacturers. Even if they don't buy manufacturer direct they can still get a link from the manufacturer just by asking.

Step 1: Create a list of all of the brands the client carries and whether they buy direct or from a wholesaler.

Step 2: Visit each manufacturer and distributor website. Find out if they have a store locator or somewhere where they list where you can buy their products.

Step 3: Reach out to those that do from a company email address including all pertinent information (include NAP!) and the link to your website or store location.

Step 4: For those who don't list this information, outreach to them and ask them if they are willing to set it up. After all it will only help you both sell more products.

Pro tip: Some websites will only display your Name, Address, Phone Number. But if they don't link to you don't be afraid to ask. A lot of times they can make the change and add your link.

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#10 Build relationships with local influencers

If you want to earn links that will really set you apart from the rest of the herd, you need to start thinking about building actual relationships with influencers. Finding influencers and getting connected can be hard; you have to be real while doing it. These people can range from your local competition, to politicians, to journalists. Finding and connecting with them requires some work, but it's worth the payoff.

Get links from places like:

Niche publications, your competition's website, local news media, government websites

How you can do it

The reality is, while some of this research and networking can be done online, at some point, you're going to have to get out of your office and interact with real humans!

For our example, let's look at how we might go about forming a relationship with a member of the local media. First off you will want to find a list of press associations in your area. This might be city based or state based. The easiest way to look for these is just to search for them in Google by typing in your state name + press association or press organization.

Once you have the list of the organization(s) you want to work with, check out their membership fees but more importantly their events and conferences. These are the real goldmines. Many of these organizations have an annual conference or event that you can attend. This is where you can usually expect to meet the people with the most connections. It's important to speak with them in person, exchange contact information, and express your willingness to contribute. If you have an intriguing idea for a specific writer, for example, someone who always writes about tech news, you may be able to pitch a problem you see in your industry that exposes consumers. Your job is to figure out what interests them and offer to help in any way.

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#11 Leverage business relationships

In many cases small businesses may already have complementary businesses that might be willing to give a link to your website. In fact, it might make sense from a referral standpoint too. If you use or refer your business to another type of business this is a great opportunity.

Get links from places like:

Other business websites

How you can do this

Getting these opportunities are as easy as curating the list and doing the outreach. Here are some examples for different business types:

• Attorneys can get links from: Process servers, investigators, and other services they refer business to
• Mortgage Brokers can link to recommended realtors and vice-versa
• Doctors can get links from schools (emergency clinic references), insurance companies, and other doctors.

Another way to go about this is to approach like-minded companies that offer services you don't and you don't plan on offering. For example if you're a greeting card store you might be able to get links from gift stores.

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Conclusion

Although good link building takes time, thought, and a good amount of effort, it's easy enough that anyone can do it. With so many different options and ways you can earn links, this is just a small sample that you can use to start gaining new ones today.

Please feel free to share your favorite link building tips. The more the better!

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Are On-Topic Links Important? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

How much does the context of a link really matter? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand looks at on- and off-topic links to uncover what packs the greatest SEO punch and shares what you should be looking for when building a high-quality link.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat a little bit about on-topic and off-topic links. One of the questions and one of the topics that you see discussed all the time in the SEO world is: Do on-topic links matter more than off-topic links? By on topic, people generally mean they come from sites and pages that are on the same or very similar subject matter to the site or page that I'm trying to get the link to.

It sort of makes intuitive sense to us that Google would care somewhat about this, that they would say, "Oh, well, here's our friend over here," we'll call him Steve. No we're going to call him Carl, because Carl is a great name.

Carl, of course, has CarlsCloset.net, CarlsCloset.net being a home organization site. Carl is going out, and he's doing some link building, which he should, and so he's got some link targets in mind. He looks at places like RealSimple.com, the magazine site, Sunset Magazine, UnderwaterHoagies.com, Carl being a great fan of all things underwater and sandwich related. So as he's looking at these sites, he's thinking to himself, well, from an SEO perspective, is it necessary the case that Real Simple, which has a lot of content on home organization and on cleaning up clutter and those kinds of things, is that going to help Carl's Closet site rank better than, say, a link from UnderwaterHoagies.com?

The answer is a little tough here. It could be the case that UnderwaterHoagies.com has a feature article all about how submariners can keep their home in order, even as they brunch under the sea. But maybe the link from RealSimple.com is coming from a less on-topic article and page. So this starts to get really messy. Is it the site that matters, or is it the page that matters? Is it the context that matters? Is it the link itself and where that's embedded in the site? What is the real understanding that Google has between relationships of on-topic and off-topic? That's where you get a lot of convoluted information.

I have seen and we have probably all heard a ton of anecdotal evidence on both sides. There are SEOs who will argue passionately from their experience that what they've seen is that on-topic links are hugely more beneficial than off-topic ones. You'll see the complete opposite from some other folks. In fact, most of my personal experiences, when I was doing more directed link building for clients way back in my SEO consulting days and even more recently as I've helped startups and advised folks, has been that off-topic links, UnderwaterHoagies.com linking to Carl's Closet, that still seems to provide quite a bit of benefit, and it's very had to gauge whether it's as much, less than, more than any of these other ones. So I think, on the anecdotal side, we're in a tough spot.

What we can say is that probably there's some additional value from on-topic sites, on-topic pages, or on-topic link connections, that Google has some idea of context. We've seen them make huge strides with algorithms like Hummingbird, certainly with their keyword matching and topic modeling algorithms. It seems very unlikely that there would be nothing in Google's algorithm that looks at the context or relationship of content between linking pages and linking websites.

However, in the real world, things are almost never equal. It's not like they're going to get exactly the same anchor text from the same importance of a page that has the same number of external links, that the content is exactly the same on all three of these websites pointing over to Carl's Closet. In the real world, Carl is going to struggle much harder to get some of these links than others. So I think that the questions we need to ask ourselves, as folks who are doing directed marketing and trying to earn links, is: Will the link actually help people? Is that link going to be clicked?

If you're on a page on Real Simple that you think very few people ever reach, you think very few people will ever click that link because it just doesn't appear to provide much value, versus you're in an article all about home organization on Underwater Hoagies, and it was featured on their home page, and you're pretty sure that a lot of the submariners who are eating their subs under the sea are very interested in this topic and they're going to click on that link, well you know what? That's a link that helps people. That probably means search engines are going to treat it with some reverence as well.

Does the link make sense in context? This is a good one to ask yourself when you are doing any kind of link building that's directed that could potentially be manipulative. If the link makes sense in context, it tends to be the case that it's going to be more useful. So if Carl contributes the article to UnderwaterHoagies.com, and the link makes sense in context, and it will help people, I think it's appropriate to put it there. If that's not the case, it could look a little manipulative. It could certainly be perceived as self-serving.

Then, can you actually acquire the link? It's wonderful when you go out and you make a list of, hey, here's the most important and relevant sites in our sector and niche, and this is how we're going to build topical authority. But if you can't get those links, hey that's tough potatoes, man. It's no better than putting a list of links and just sorting them by, God knows, a horrible metric like PageRank or Alexa rank or something like that.

I would instead ask yourself if it's realistic for you to be able to get those links and pursue those as well as pursuing or looking at the metrics, and the importance, and the topical relevance.

Let's think about this from a broad perspective. Search engines are caring about what? They're caring about matching the content relevance to the searcher's query. They care about raw link popularity. That's sort of like the old-school algorithms of PageRank and number of links and that kind of thing. They do care about topical authority and brand authority. We talked about on Whiteboard Friday previously around some topical authorities and how Google determines the authority and the subject matter of a site's authority. They care about domain authority, the raw importance of a domain on the web, and they care about things like engagement, user and usage data, and given how much they can follow all of us around the web these days, they probably know pretty well whether people are clicking on these articles using these pages or not.

Then anchor text. Not every link that you might build or acquire or earn is going to provide all of these in one single package. Each of them are going to be contributing pieces of those puzzles. When it comes to the on-topic/off-topic link debate, I'm much more about caring about the answers to these kinds of questions -- Can I acquire the link? Is it useful to people? Will they actually use it? Does the link make sense in context? -- than I am about is it on-topic or off-topic? I'm not sure that I would ever urge you to prioritize based on that.

That said, I'm certainly looking forward to your feedback this week and hearing about your experiences with on-topic and off-topic links, and hopefully we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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10 SEO Myths that Friggin' Tick Me Off

Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

I love SEO. I love talking about SEO. Most non-SEO folk you talk to are generally very nice people. They may not understand everything you say, but they often nod their head and smile. The open-minded may even ask you to look at their site.

On the other hand, there's the non-SEO "expert" (loosely defined as someone who has a cousin in marketing) who represents a different beast altogether. Well intentioned but misinformed, they believe SEO is urban legend, no better than a Ponzi scheme.

Here's what I have to say to a few of the worst offenders.

1. SEO is a scam

What the friggin' what?

The above screenshot of organic traffic to Moz's own website shows the kind of success many strive for, but it is neither unusual or nor unattainable for folks that consistently invest in SEO as a marketing strategy.

Sadly, many business owners have been approached by less-than-ethical marketing vendors who promise SEO services but basically deliver nothing. If you are paying $49/month to a service that promises you top rankings in Google, it is almost certainly a scam.

That's not SEO.

Perhaps this most harmful of myths stems from those seeking quick and easy wins with little effort. Indeed, there are cases of SEO wins that meet these criteria, typically when a site has easily correctable technical problems. In other cases, SEO involves real effort and commitment which often pays additional rewards beyond the increase in traffic.

2. Google will figure it out

No. No they friggin' won't.

Here's what many webmasters see far too often when they trust search engines to do their SEO for them.

The temptation of many website owners and developers is to throw as many URLs as possible—sometimes millions—at Google's crawlers and pray that their mysterious algorithms will magically deliver these pages to valuable users. Alternatively, even sites with a handful of pages expect search engines to do all the heavy lifting.

Google is smart, but not magic.

What's forgotten in this equation is that Google and other search engines strive to mimic human behavior in evaluating content (and no human wants to sort through a million near-duplicate pages) and use human generated signals (such as links and engagement metrics) to crawl and rank results.

Every page delivered in search results should be unique, valuable, and more often than not contain technical clues to help search engines sort them from the billions of possible pages on the web. Without these qualities, search marketing is a game of chance that almost always loses.

3. We did SEO once

Congratulations. Buy yourself a cookie.

It's sad to see organic search traffic fall over time, but all to often that's exactly what happens when no effort is applied. Continually maintaining your SEO efforts is essential because of:

• Link degradation (a.k.a. link rot)
• Publishing new pages
• Evolving search engine algorithms
• The competition moving ahead of you
• Outdated content
• ...and more

For a small minority of sites, SEO doesn't need continual investment. My father-in-law's auto shop is a perfect example. He has more business than he needs, and as long as folks find him when searching for "Helfer Auto" he's happy. In this case, simply monitoring your SEO with the addition of a deeper dive 2-3 times per year may be sufficient.

For the rest of us, one-and-done SEO falls short.

4. Link building is dead (again)

Sigh.

Recently the SEO world got worked up when Google's John Mueller stated link building is something he'd "try to avoid."

Many misinterpreted this to mean that link building is bad, against the rules, and Google will penalize you for it.

In fact, nothing has changed that the fact that search engines use link authority and anchor text signals heavily in their search ranking algorithms. Or that white-hat link building is a completely legitimate and time-tested marketing practice.

Weighting the Clusters of Ranking Factors in Google's Algorithm by Rand Fishkin

I'm certain John was referring to the more manipulative type of link building, no doubt encountered frequently at Google. To be fair, this type of non-relevant, scaled approach to links should be avoided at all costs, and search engines have taken great strides to algorithmically detect and punish this behavior.

Marketers build links in a number of natural ways, and attracting links to your website remains darn-near essential for any successful SEO undertaking. If you need help, we write about it frequently.

5. I want to rank #1 for "magic keyword"

No. No you friggin' don't.

Look, here's a personal example. I really want to rank #1 for "SEO" because Moz offers SEO software. Because of our Beginner's Guide to SEO. Because SEO is our lifeblood.

But we don't, and it doesn't matter.

Moz typically ranks #2-3 for "SEO". It sends good traffic, but not nearly as good as the thousands of long-tail keywords with more focused intent. In fact, if you went through our entire keyword set, you would find that "SEO" by itself only sends a tiny fraction of our entire traffic, and we could easily survive without it.

The truth is, when you create solid content focused around topics, you almost always receive far more (and oftentimes better) traffic from long-tail keywords that you didn't try to rank for.

The magic happens when visits reach your site because the content matched thier needs, but not necessarily when you matched the right keywords.

6. Google hates SEO

Some days, it feels that way.

In truth, Google's relationship with SEO is much more nuanced.

1. Google readily states that SEO can "potentially improve your site and save time" and that many SEO agencies "provide useful services." Google even advises "If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better."
2. Google published their own SEO Starter Guide. While a bit out of date, it certainly encourages people to take advantage of SEO techniques to improve search visibility.
3. Google Analytics offers a series of SEO Reports. Keep in mind, these are almost laughably unusable due to the handicapped data quality.

While Google seems to encourage search engine optimization, it almost certainly hates manipulative SEO. The type of SEO meant to trick search engines into believing false popularity and relevancy signals in order to rank content higher.

In fact, many of the myths in the post boil down to some folks' inability to distinguish between hard-working SEO and search engine spam. Which leads us to:

7. SEO is dead, because Google Answers

It's scary for SEOs when we ask Google a question and see an actual answer instead of a link, as in the example below. It's even more frightening when Google takes over entire verticals such as the weather, mortgage calculators, or song lyrics.

With the flip of a button, it seems Google can wipe out entire business models.

Screenshot hat tip to Dan Barker

In reality, search growth and traffic continues to grow for most industries. Consider the following:

• World Internet and search activity continues to rise, particularly in the mobile sector. This generally indicates that more users are performing more searches on a greater number of devices.
• MozCast reports only 4.9% of Google searches result in an answer box.
• A recent study by Stone Temple showed that 74.3% of Google answer boxes contained linked attribution, while the rest was public domain knowledge.

Anecdotal evidence further suggests that even when presented with answer boxes, a large number of users click through to the cited website.

People want answers, but at least for now they also want their websites.

8. SEO is all tricks

Really? This is plain sad. Somebody make me a sad salad.

"Tricks" is what professionals call bad, manipulative SEO that gets you penalized. The problem, I believe, is the first thing any developer or marketing manager hears about SEO is something close to "put more keywords in the title tag."

If that's all SEO is, it does sound like tricks.

Real SEO makes every part of content organization and the browsing experience better. This includes:

1. Creating content that reverse engineers user needs
2. Making content more discoverable, both for humans and search engine crawlers
3. Improving accessibility through site architecture and user experience
4. Structuring data for unambiguous understanding
5. Optimizing for social sharing standards
6. Improving search presence by understanding how search engines generate snippets
7. Technical standards to help search engines categorize and serve content to the right audience
8. Improving website performance through optimizations such as site speed
9. Sharing content with the right audiences, increasing exposure and traffic through links and mentions

Each of these actions is valuable by itself. By optimizing your web content from every angle, you may not even realize you're doing SEO, but you'll reap many times the rewards.

9. PageRank

Actually, I like PageRank.

But it's still a flippin' myth.

PageRank was an incredibly innovative solution allowing Google to gauge the popularity of a webpage to the point that they could build the world's best search engine on the concept.

Despite what people say, PageRank is very likely still a part of Google's algorithm (although with severely reduced influence). More than that, PageRank gave Google the ability to build more advanced algorithms on top of the basic system.

Consider concepts like Topic Sensitive Page Rank or even this recent paper on entity salience from Google Research which highlights the use of a PageRank-like system.

The source of many bad myths

So why is PageRank such a bad myth?

1. Toolbar PageRank, the PageRank most SEOs talk about, will likely never be updated again.
2. PageRank correlates poorly with search engine rankings, to the point that we quit studying it long ago.
3. PageRank is easy to manipulate.

Fortunately, Google has moved away from talking about PageRank or supporting it in a public-facing way. This will hopefully lead to an end of people using PageRank for manipulative purposes, such as selling links and shady services.

If you're interested, several companies have developed far more useful link metrics including Majestic's Citation Flow, Ahrefs Rank, and Moz's Page and Domain Authority.

10. Social activity doesn't affect SEO

At this point, I barely have strength left to argue.

Explaining this myth could take an entire post, so I'll boil it down the bare facts. The basic argument goes like this:

"Google says they don't use Facebook likes or Tweet counts to rank websites. Therefore, social activity doesn't matter to SEO."

This statement is half right, but can you guess which half?

It's true that Google does not use metrics such as Facebook shares or Twitter Followers directly in search rankings.

On the other hand, successful social activity can have significant secondary effects on your SEO efforts. Social activity helps address two of the major tasks facing SEOs:

1. Search engine discovery and indexation
2. Content distribution, which leads to links and shares

Perhaps no one explains it better than AJ Kohn, in his excellent Social Signals and SEO.

Stolen with permission from AJ Kohn

Successful social activity puts your content in front of the right group of users, increasing visits, engagement, and brand signals like the number of users searching for your site. Finally, the simple act of more influencers visiting your content can lead to more links and further sharing, and the cycle repeats itself. All of these secondary effects can significantly boost your SEO efforts.

More myths from SEOs

We asked several folks on Twitter about thier least favorite SEO myths. Here are a few favorite replies.

@CyrusShepard That Google doesn't use any visit/engagement/traffic data in any way in their search quality systems

— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard the one that still bugs me the most is PageRank

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard The disavow tool is useless. :)

— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) February 20, 2015

@dan_shure @CyrusShepard How about "you can absolutely, unequivocally rely on the canonical tag... even when set up perfect" :(

— Bill Sebald (@billsebald) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard you should have x number of keywords in your keywords meta tag, you know, the tag you don't need.

— Chris McElroy (@SEOpn) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That SEO is something that can be done once and then your site is magically all-good for rankings nirvana for the rest of days

— Christian Bullock (@ChristianBk) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard that there is no point getting more than one link from the same domain as it doesn't pass anymore value.

— Tim Grice (@Tim_Grice) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That you can pay an agency $100/month and “rank #1 for everything!”

— Brandon Hassler (@BrandonHassler) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard That it's easy. If it's that damn easy, how come Google invest huge amounts in providing *relevancy* (algos, patents, tech)?

— Tony Dimmock (@Tony_DWM) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard Google favors pages that run AdWords. I roll my eye whenever I heard this from a "subject expert" and they've died in my mind.

— victorpan (@victorpan) February 20, 2015

@CyrusShepard Bonus myth, SEO is dead! :)

— Hardik Oza (@Ozaemotion) February 20, 2015

What SEO myth drives you nuts? Let us know in the comments below!

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Grow Your Own SEOs: Professional Development for Digital Marketers

Posted by RuthBurrReedy

Finding your next SEO hire is hard, but it's only half the battle. Growing a team isn't just about hiring—it's about making your whole team, newbies and experts alike, better marketers.

It's almost impossible to build a one-size-fits-all training program for digital marketers, since the tasks involved will depend a lot on the role. Even "SEO" can mean a lot of different things. Your role might be highly technical, highly creative, or a mix of both. Tactics like local SEO or conversion rate optimization might be a huge part of an SEO's job or might be handled by another person entirely. Sometimes an SEO role includes elements like social media or paid search. The skills you teach your trainees will depend on what you need them to do, and more specifically, what you need them to do right now.

Whatever the specifics of the marketing role, you need to make sure you're providing a growth plan for your digital marketers (this goes for your more experienced team members, as well as your newbies). A professional growth plan helps you and your team members:

• Track whether or not they're making progress in their roles. Taking on a new skill set can be daunting. Having a growth plan can alleviate some of the stress less-experienced employees may feel when learning a new skill, and makes sure more experienced employees aren't stagnating.
• Spot problem areas. Everyone's talents are different, but you don't want someone to miss out on growth opportunities because they're such a superstar in one area and are neglecting everything else.
• Have conversations around promotions and raises. Consistently tracking people's development across a variety of skill sets allows you to compare where someone is now to where they were when you hired them; it also gives you a framework to discuss what additional steps might be needed before a promotion or raise is in order, and help them develop a plan to get there.
• Advance their careers. One of your duties as their manager is to make sure you're giving them what they need to continue on their career path. A professional development plan should be managed with career goals in mind.
• Increase employee retention. Smart people like to learn and grow, and if you're not providing them ways to do so, they're not going to stick around.

We have technical/on-page SEOs, content marketers, local SEOs and marketing copywriters all working together on the same team at BigWing. We wanted to create a framework for professional development that we could apply to the whole team, so we identified a set of areas that any digital marketer should be growing in, regardless of their focus. This growth plan is part of everyone's mid-year and year-end reviews.

Here's what it looks like:

Growth areas for digital marketers

Want your own copy of the Professional Advancement Sheet? Get it here!

Tactical -> strategic

At the beginner level, team members are still learning the basic concepts and tasks associated with their role, and how those translate to the client metrics they're being measured on. It takes time to encounter and fix enough different kinds of things to know "in x situation, look at a, b and c and then try y or z."

As someone grows in their role, they will learn more advanced tactics. They should also be more and more able to use critical thinking to figure out how to solve problems and tackle longer-term client goals and projects. At the senior level, an SEO should be building long-term strategies and be comfortable with unusual campaigns and one-off projects.

Small clients -> big clients

There are plenty of small brochure websites in the world, and these sites are a great testing ground for the fundamentals of SEO: they may still have weird jacked-up problems (so many websites do), but they are a manageable size and don't usually have the potential for esoteric technical issues that large, complex sites do. Once someone has a handle on SEO, you can start assigning bigger and badder sites and projects (with plenty of mentoring from more experienced team members—more on that later).

We thought about making this one "Easy clients -> difficult clients," because there's another dimension to this line of progress: increasingly complex client relationships. Clients with very large or complicated websites (or clients with more than one website) are likely to have higher budgets, bigger internal staff, and more stakeholders. As the number of people involved increases, so does the potential for friction, so a senior-level SEO should be able to handle those complex relationships with aplomb.

Learning -> teaching

At the beginner level, people are learning digital marketing in general and learning about our specific internal processes. As they gain experience, they become a resource for team members still in the "learning" phase, and at the senior level they should be a go-to for tough questions and expert opinions.

Even a beginner digital marketer may have other things to teach the team; skills learned from previous careers, hobbies or side gigs can be valuable additions. For example, we had a brand-new team member with a lot of experience in photography, a valuable skill for content marketers; she was able to start teaching her teammates more about taking good photos while still learning other content marketing fundamentals herself.

I love this stock picture because the chalkboard just says "learning." Photo via Pixabay.

Since managers can't be everywhere at once, more experienced employees must take an active role in teaching. It's not enough that they be experts (which is why this scale doesn't go from "Learning" to "Mastering"); they have to be able to impart that expertise to others. Teaching is more than just being available when people have questions, too: senior team members are expected to be proactive about taking the time to show junior team members the ropes.

Prescribed -> creative

The ability to move from executing a set series of tasks to creating creative, heavily client-focused digital marketing campaigns is, in my opinion, one of the best predictors of long-term SEO success. When someone is just starting out in SEO, it's appropriate to have a fairly standard set of tasks they're carrying out. For a lot of those small sites that SEO trainees start on, that set of SEO fundamentals goes a long way. The challenge comes when the basics aren't enough.

Creative SEO comes from being able to look at a client's business, not just their website, and tailor a strategy to their specific needs. Creative SEOs are looking for unique solutions to the unique problems that arise from that particular client's combination of business model, target market, history and revenue goals. Creativity can also be put to work internally, in the form of suggested process improvements and new revenue-driving projects.

General -> T-shaped

The concept of the T-shaped marketer has been around for a few years (if you're not familiar with the idea, you can read up on it on Rand's blog or the Distilled blog). Basically, it means that in addition to deep knowledge whatever area(s) of inbound marketing we specialize in, digital marketers should also work to develop basic knowledge of a broad set of marketing disciplines, in order to understand more about the craft of marketing as a whole.

Source: The T-Shaped Marketer

A digital marketer who's just starting out will naturally be focusing more on the broad part of their T, getting their head around the basic concepts and techniques that make up the digital marketing skill set. Eventually most people naturally find a few specialty areas that they're really passionate about. Encouraging employees to build deep expertise ultimately results in a whole team full of subject matter experts in a whole team's worth of subjects.

Beginner -> expert

This one is pretty self-explanatory. The important thing to note is that expertise isn't something that just happens to you after you do something a lot (although that's definitely part of it). Honing expertise means actively pursuing new learning opportunities and testing new ideas and tactics, and we look for the pursuit of expertise as part of evaluating someone's professional growth.

Observing -> leading

Anyone who is working in inbound marketing should be consistently observing the industry—they should be following search engine news, reading blog posts from industry experts, and attending events and webinars to learn more about their craft. It's a must-do at all levels, and even someone who's still learning the ropes can be keeping an eye on industry buzz and sharing items of interest with their co-workers.

Not everyone is crazy about the phrase "thought leadership." When you're a digital marketing agency, though, your people are your product—their depth of knowledge and quality of work is a big part of what you're selling. As your team gains experience and confidence, it's appropriate to expect them to start participating more in the digital marketing space, both online and in person. This participation could look like:

• Pitching and speaking at marketing conferences
• Contributing to blogs, whether on your site or in other marketing communities
• Organizing local tech meetups
• Regularly participating in online events like #seochat

...or a variety of other activities, depending on the individual's talents and interests. Not only does this kind of thought-leadership activity promote your agency brand, it also helps your employees build their personal brands—and don't forget, a professional development plan needs to be as much about helping your people grow in their careers as it is about growing the skill sets you need.

Low output -> high output

I love the idea of meticulous, hand-crafted SEO, but let's be real: life at an agency means getting stuff done. When people are learning to do stuff, it takes them longer to do (which is BY FAR MY LEAST FAVORITE PART OF LEARNING TO DO THINGS, I HATE IT SO MUCH), so expectations of the number of clients/volume of work they can handle should scale appropriately. It's okay for people to work at their own pace and in their own way, but at some point you need to be able to rely on your team to turn things around quickly, handle urgent requests, and consistently hit deadlines, or you're going to lose customers.

You may notice that some of these growth areas overlap, and that's okay—the idea is to create a nuanced approach that captures all the different ways a digital marketer can move toward excellence.

Like with all other aspects of a performance review, it's important to be as specific as possible when discussing a professional growth plan. If there's an area a member of your team needs to make more progress in, don't just say e.g. "You need to be more strategic." Come up with specific projects and milestones for your marketer to hit so you're both clear on when they're growing and what they need to do to get to the next level.

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