One startup's journey into SEO

http://cam.ly/blog/2011/01/one-startups-journey-into-seo/

by danecjensen • 16 years ago

65 24 16 years ago

cam.ly

naithemilkman• 16 years ago

I've done my fair share of research on SEO as well during my startup and I can sum it up in one sentence.

Assuming equal on-site optimisations, he with more backlinks wins.

quizbiz2• 16 years ago

quality > quantity.

Getting mentioned on NYT.com will yield powerful results. Posting yet another link in a related discussion forum topic won't do much.

ig1• 16 years ago

Useful tip: NYT syndicates ReadWriteWeb, and it's much easier to get RWW to link to your startup.

underdown• 16 years ago

Quantity matters immensely too - especially in the context of number of domains linking to you. This is typically referred to as "link popularity".

patio113• 16 years ago

This is pretty much true on a per page basis, but advanced SEO becomes less of a page optimization campaign and more about strategziing such that the business has positive results regardless of the performance of individual words or pages.

Exact match domains also crush backlinks.

mise2• 16 years ago

How do near-match domains do? I have [adjective][keyword].com and it certainly didn't jump into the SERPs.

lamnk• 16 years ago

Yes, generally speaking, who has more backlinks wins. But take into your consideration the following:

- PR of the page of the backlink. A backlink from a page with PR 5 is better than 20 backlinks from pages with PR 0

- However, PR is not the only matter. There is also domain authority. A page with PR0 on a site with high domain authority (like NYT) could still outrank a PR3 page.

- Anchor text of the backlink. Links like "Click here" or just a plain URL don't say a lot, in compare to "Security Camera" for example.

- Where the link is placed on the page also matters. A link at the top or in the article beats links in the comment areas or at the footer.

justinchen• 16 years ago

But it's also common for people to overlook what opportunities they still have for on-site optimization. Most people can continue to increase their rankings by focusing on the in-house stuff.

JeffL2• 16 years ago

Thanks for the article. I think it will be helpful.

Can I ask, either OP or anyone else, what sort of percent of your traffic comes from SEO? I've seen it stated on the web that 70%-80% of traffic comes from searches, but for me, it's more like 5%, with adwords and direct links being the rest.

quizbiz2• 16 years ago

It really depends on the type of business. Notably, a lot of smaller direct sales web companies have almost all of their traffic come from SEO.

Most sites I have been involved with see 50%-70% of traffic from search. More brand equity = less importance for search.

More importantly though, search tends to convert way way better than really anything else (ppc included) when goals tracking (ie nav to contact page and thank you page).

You can probably give your traffic a lot of growth by investing more time into efforts with SEO in mind. Let me know if you need help. :)

thenayr• 16 years ago

This ^

I've managed sites with nearly 99% of traffic coming directly from search engines and some as low as 5%. It correlates directly with the type of site you are managing.

If you are targeting a very specific niche community, you would likely receive much better results injecting yourself into that community and becoming an authoritative figure and focusing on direct marketing then an all-out SEO campaign. However, if your selling cases for the iPhone 4, your much better off with focusing all of your efforts on conquering the top spots on Google.

JeffL2• 16 years ago

Wow, sounds like I've been doing it all wrong for four years. Pretty much just thrown up some adwords and worked on my game and never really thought about SEO at all since it all seemed a little bit sleazy.

patio113• 16 years ago

Not at my computer, but BCC typically sees half of traffic and 75% of profit from organic SEO.

acangiano• 16 years ago

Here are a few positive factors that influence your ranking:

- Exact match keywords are an absolute killer when it comes to ranking

- Local beats global if your target is geographic (e.g., mysite.ca will perform better than mysite.com in Canada, particularly if the .ca is hosted in Canada)

- Number of backlinks to the specific page

- Number of backlinks to the whole domain

- Popularity of backlinks

- A variety of backlinks. Your backlinks need to look natural to Google. You want a backlink pyramid, so don't have 100 PR5 backlinks, and 10 PR0 ones. The web doesn't work that way, and Google knows it.

- For the same reason, have no follow backlinks as well. Whether they carry PR juice or not, it's unnatural for your site not to have a mix of no follow and do follow backlinks.

- Backlinks from .edu/.gov sites

- An aged domain name

- Include the keyword in the url, title tag, description, etc.

- Metatags are still important, even if Google doesn't care about them.

- Make your site as fast as you can

- Have an XML sitemap

- PubSubHubbub is excellent to get your site noticed/indexed by Google

- The number of indexed pages on your site

- How frequently is your site updated (often is better than rarely)

- Make your content unique. Duplicate content is not as much of a big deal as they say it is, but you definitely don't want to look like an autoblog in the eyes of Google (particularly in the early days of your site).

- A public whois record

- A domain registered for more than one year

- Get your site indexed in DMOZ and Yahoo Directory

bobds4• 16 years ago

Why this list is no good:

http://www.seo-theory.com/2011/01/07/why-you-cannot-reverse-...

ra• 16 years ago

I think you (and the author) are wrong. It is a good list.

Sure Google's algorithm is continually evolving and uses 10,000 ranking factors. But the web is made of links, and links will always be trust factors for a search engine.

Google just wants to make sure they are 'genuine organic' links.

graupel• 16 years ago

Interesting writeup; I also may buy one of your cameras since we're having twins in May!

mise2• 16 years ago

My own strategy right now is to set up a members' forum as part of my paid service, but to make reading the forum free for all. Hope that it will help with content generation.

One startup's journey into SEO

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