SEO "Dinosaur" Tactics That You Should Retire - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

It"s tough to admit it, but many of us still practice outdated SEO tactics in the belief that they still have a great deal of positive influence. In this week"s Whiteboard Friday, Rand gently sets us straight and offers up a series of replacement activities that will go much farther toward moving the needle. Share your own tips and favorites in the comments!

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we"re going to go back in time to the prehistoric era and talk about a bunch of "dinosaur" tactics, things that SEOs still do, many of us still do, and we probably shouldn"t.

We need to replace and retire a lot of these tactics. So I"ve got five tactics, but there"s a lot more, and in fact I"d loved to hear from some of you on some of yours.

Dino Tactic #1: AdWords/Keyword Planner-based keyword research

But the first one we"ll start with is something we"ve talked about a few times here — AdWords and Keyword Planner-based keyword research. So you know there"s a bunch of problems with the metrics in there, but I still see a lot of folks starting their keyword research there and then expanding into other tools.

Replace it with clickstream data-driven tools with Difficulty and CTR %

My suggestion would be start with a broader set if you possibly can. If you have the budget, replace this with something that is driven by clickstream data, like Ahrefs or SEMrush or Keyword Explorer. Even Google Search Suggest and related searches plus Google Trends tend to be better at capturing more of this.

Why it doesn"t work

I think is just because AdWords hides so many keywords that they don"t think are commercially relevant. It"s too inaccurate, especially the volume data. If you"re actually creating an AdWords campaign, the volume data gets slightly better in terms of its granularity, but we found it is still highly inaccurate as compared as to when you actually run that campaign.

It"s too imprecise, and it lacks a bunch of critical metrics, including difficulty and click-through rate percentage, which you"ve got to know in order to prioritize keywords effectively.

Dino Tactic #2: Subdomains and separate domains for SERP domination

Next up, subdomains and separate domains for SERP domination. So classically, if you wanted to own the first page of Google search results for a branded query or an unbranded query, maybe you just want to try and totally dominate, it used to be the case that one of the ways to do this was to add in a bunch of subdomains to your website or register some separate domains so that you"d be able to control that top 10.

Why it doesn"t work

What has happened recently, though, is that Google has started giving priority to multiple subpages in a single SERP from a single domain. You can see this for example with Yelp on virtually any restaurant-related searches, or with LinkedIn on a lot of business topic and job-related searches.

You can see it with Quora on a bunch of question style searches, where they"ll come up for all of them, or Stack Overflow, where they come up for a lot of engineering and development-related questions.

Replace it with barnacle SEO and subfolder hosted content

So one of the better ways to do this nowadays is with barnacle SEO and subfolder hosted content, meaning you don"t have to put your content on a separate subdomain in order to rank multiple times in the same SERP.

Barnacle SEO also super handy because Google is giving a lot of benefit to some of these websites that host content you can create or generate and profiles you can create and generate. That"s a really good way to go. This is mostly just because of this shift from the subdomains being the way to get into SERPs multiple times to individual pages being that path.

Dino Tactic #3: Prioritizing number one rankings over other traffic-driving SEO techniques

Third, prioritizing number one rankings over other traffic-driving SEO techniques. This is probably one of the most common "dinosaur" tactics I see, where a lot of folks who are familiar with the SEO world from maybe having used consultants or agencies or brought it in-house 10, 15, 20 years ago are still obsessed with that number one organic ranking over everything else.

Replace it with SERP feature SEO (especially featured snippets) and long-tail targeting

In fact, that"s often a pretty poor ROI investment compared to things like SERP features, especially the featured snippet, which is getting more and more popular. It"s used in voice search. It oftentimes doesn"t need to come from the number one ranking result in the SERP. It can come number three, number four, or number seven.

It can even be the result that brings back the featured snippet at the very top. Its click-through rate is often higher than number one, meaning SERP features a big way to go. This is not the only one, too. Image SEO, doing local SEO when the local pack appears, doing news SEO, potentially having a Twitter profile that can rank in those results when Google shows tweets.

And, of course, long-tail targeting, meaning going after other keywords that are not as competitive, where you don"t need to compete against as many folks in order to get that number one ranking spot, and often, in aggregate, long tail can be more than ranking number one for that "money" keyword, that primary keyword that you"re going after.

Why it doesn"t work

Why is this happening? Well, it"s because SERP features are biasing the click-through rate such that number one just isn"t worth what it used to be, and the long tail is often just higher ROI per hour spent.

Dino Tactic #4: Moving up rankings with link building alone

Fourth, moving up the rankings on link building alone. Again, I see a lot of people do this, where they"re ranking number 5, number 10, number 20, and they think, "Okay, I"m ranking in the first couple of pages of Google. My next step is link build my way to the top."

Why it no longer works on its own

Granted, historically, back in the dinosaur era, dinosaur era of being 2011, this totally worked. This was "the" path to get higher rankings. Once you were sort of in the consideration set, links would get you most of the way up to the top. But today, not the case.

Replace it with searcher task accomplishment, UX optimization, content upgrades, and brand growth

Instead I"m going to suggest you retire that and replace it with searcher task accomplishment, which we"ve seen a bunch of people invest in optimization there and springboard their site, even with worse links, not as high DA, all of that kind of stuff. UX optimization, getting the user experience down and nailing the format of the content so that it better serves searchers.

Content upgrades, improving the actual content on the page, and brand growth, associating your brand more with the topic or the keyword. Why is this happening? Well, because links alone it feels like today are just not enough. They"re still a powerful ranking factor. We can"t ignore them entirely certainly.

But if you want to unseat higher ranked pages, these types of investments are often much easier to make and more fruitful.

Dino Tactic #5: Obsessing about keyword placement in certain tags/areas

All right, number five. Last but not least, obsessing about keyword placement in certain tags and certain areas. For example, spending inordinate amounts of time and energy making sure that the H1 and H2, the headline tags, can contain keywords, making sure that the URL contains the keywords in exactly the format that you want with the hyphens, repeating text a certain number of times in the content, making sure that headlines and titles are structured in certain ways.

Why it (kind of) doesn"t work

It"s not that this doesn"t work. Certainly there"s a bare minimum. We"ve got to have our keyword used in the title. We definitely want it in the headline. If that"s not in an H1 tag, I think we can live with that. I think that"s absolutely fine. Instead I would urge you to move some of that same obsession that you had with perfecting those tags, getting the last 0.01% of value out of those into related keywords and related topics, making sure that the body content uses and explains the subjects, the topics, the words and phrases that Google knows searchers associate with a given topic.

My favorite example of this is if you"re trying to rank for "New York neighborhoods" and you have a page that doesn"t include the word Brooklyn or Manhattan or Bronx or Queens or Staten Island, your chances of ranking are much, much worse, and you can get all the links and the perfect keyword targeting in your H1, all of that stuff, but if you are not using those neighborhood terms that Google clearly can associate with the topic, with the searcher"s query, you"re probably not going to rank.

Replace it with obsessing over related keywords and topics

This is true no matter what you"re trying to rank for. I don"t care if it"s blue shoes or men"s watches or B2B SaaS products. Google cares a lot more about whether the content solves the searcher"s query. Related topics, related keywords are often correlated with big rankings improvements when we see folks undertake them.

I was talking to an SEO a few weeks ago who did this. They just audited across their site, found the 5 to 10 terms that they felt they were missing from the content, added those into the content intelligently, adding them to the content in such a way that they were actually descriptive and useful, and then they saw rankings shoot up with nothing else, no other work. Really, really impressive stuff.

So take some of these dino tactics, try retiring them and replacing them with some of these modern ones, and see if your results don"t come out better too. Look forward to your thoughts on other dino tactics in the comments. We"ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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The Moz Blog

What if You Can’t Find Your Niche?

The post What if You Can’t Find Your Niche? appeared first on ProBlogger.

Are you struggling to stay motivated with your blog writing about the same thing again and again?

Or are you flitting around between lots of different topics, trying and failing to find one thing you want to write about?

In the old days of blogging, bloggers were often advised to be very specific – define a niche on a very narrow topic (e.g. “iPhone covers”) and become the expert in that particular narrow field.

Thankfully, things are more relaxed these days. Many bloggers have a fairly broad remit, and it’s become far more common to think about having a niche demographic than a niche topic (which I wrote about on ProBlogger way back in 2007).

Of course, bloggers still need some sort of niche. It’s hard to think of any successful blogs that cover every single topic the blogger could possibly be interested in.

But if the path to finding your niche is a little rocky, don’t worry because…

Plenty of Bloggers Don’t Succeed with Their First Idea

There are lots of bloggers out there who took a while to find their niche. Perhaps you’re one of them.

Some bloggers started a blog that took a long time to see traction. It took Chris Brogan eight years to get his first 100 subscribers. And Brian Casel reveals in this post that

My blog received less than 20 visitors a day. My newsletter did not exist. I had been blogging for years, but couldn’t connect with an audience, let alone create a product they might buy.

before he finally gained traction with a three-step strategy.

Other bloggers try several niches before finding the one that’s a perfect fit for them. Johnny B Truant started out writing about weightlifting and running for diabetics, used to set up WordPress blogs, and now runs the publishing business Sterling & Stone alongside Sean Platt.

So if your blog seems to be growing very slowly, or you’ve tried out a couple of niches that just weren’t right for you, take heart. It’s an experience many, many bloggers have faced.

Including me.

When I began blogging in 2002, it was out of curiosity. It wasn’t until a year later that I started my first photography blog (a camera review blog thatI later re-launched as Digital Photography School). And during 2004 I started a lot of different blogs – it got up to 30 at one point. I launched ProBlogger in September 2004, and it wasn’t until 2005 that I went full time. (You can read the full story here.)

Finding Your Niche

There’s no magic way to find the perfect niche for you. But here are some questions you might like think about that could help you choose.

• What have you already tried in terms of blogging? Were there any aspects of it that you particularly enjoyed? Maybe you had a blog about meal planning that you struggled to feel interested in, but loved writing a post about cooking alongside your kids.
• What blogs or magazines do you read? Could you write about similar topics?
• What topics can you imagine yourself talking about or writing about for years to come?
• What sort of blog would feel like “you”? If your current topic seems like an uncomfortable fit, something you wouldn’t want to talk to your friends about, then maybe it isn’t right for you.

I know many bloggers feel they don’t want to confine themselves to a single niche.

If that’s you, maybe you’d find it helpful to focus on your audience instead of on a particular topic. For instance, you might want to write for “parents” or “retirees”, covering multiple topics that would be of interest to that audience.

For more help finding your niche, listen to my podcast on how to decide what your blog should be about, which covers 15 great questions to ask yourself.

Are Your Early Blogging Efforts Wasted?

If you’ve been working hard for months or even years on a blog only to decide your heart really isn’t in it, you might find it very hard to let go.

It can feel like all those words and all that effort to grow your mailing list or to increase your pageviews were a waste of time.

But there’s a different way to look at it. All that work was vital in getting you to where you are right now, and none of it was wasted. The skills you learned, from setting up WordPress to crafting great blog post titles, will be a huge help to you with your next blog.

(If you decide to start a completely new blog, rather than changing direction with your existing one, you might also want to look into selling your first blog.)

When Thomas Edison was working on his nickel-iron storage batteries, he told a reporter, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.

Hopefully you won’t need to go through 10,000 blogs before finding your niche. But you may well need to try out a few wrong paths or false starts before finding the best way forward for you.

Is it Time to Change Direction, or Start Something New?

As you’ve been reading this post, you may think your blog just isn’t a good fit for you anymore. You’re struggling with motivation to write there. Perhaps you got into that niche because you thought it would make money. Or perhaps you picked a topic that interested you a couple of years ago, but is no longer something you find engaging.

Is it time for a change of direction? You could refocus your existing blog. Or you could launch something completely new.

If you’re going to start a new blog, check out these podcast episodes:

• Do These Things Before You Launch Your Blog
• How Many Live Posts Do You Need When You Launch Your Blog

Even better, you can work through our (completely free) Start a Blog Course. Sign up here and get started straight away.

If you’re going to refocus or even relaunch your existing blog (especially if you haven’t written much, or anything, for a while), listen to our podcast episode on how to relaunch a dormant blog.

Finally, if you’d like a hand brainstorming about your new niche, come over to the ProBlogger Community group on Facebook. (Start your post with the hashtag #ask, so we know it’s a question.) We’ll be glad to help you.

Image credit: Tim Mossholder

The post What if You Can’t Find Your Niche? appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

ProBlogger

JavaScript SEO 101: How to Crawl JavaScript

Your website is your virtual storefront, and every marketer wants to create a dynamic experience on their site to showcase their brand, products, and services. JavaScript is a key tool that helps marketers to create rich, interactive web experiences that delight users. But alas, like most things in this life, there’s a catch.

JavaScript content can cause unforeseen SEO issues if Google isn’t crawling, indexing, and ranking it properly, so auditing your site with JavaScript rendering is critical to your SEO strategy. Let’s take a step back and look at the basics.

What is JavaScript?

From a technical standpoint, JavaScript code makes changes to a webpage’s HTML to create interactive effects within web browsers.

Historically, Google wasn’t great at crawling and rendering JavaScript, but now Google and Ask are the only search engines to properly index JavaScript-generated content. No offense to Jeeves, but you’re probably not optimizing for Ask, so we’re going to keep the focus on Google.

How Does Google Index JavaScript?

Google leverages “headless browsing” when crawling your site to understand a user’s experience and page content. That means it’s fetching webpages without the user interface.

So Google will come to your site, crawl the content, and in an instant do its first wave of indexing based on your HTML. Then as rendering resources become available, it will do a second wave of indexing based on the JavaScript cues it detects.

 

How Can JavaScript Affect SEO?

It’s incredibly important to know if Google is able to crawl and index the Javascript rendered version of pages as well as the HTML version.

JavaScript affects:

1. Crawlability: If content and links are loaded into pages via JavaScript, Google needs to render the pages with JavaScript in order to see that content. In some cases, a web page may have no content at all until the JavaScript runs. If your code isn’t properly implemented, there’s a good chance Google will see a blank page and move on. Google may see a version of a website that you didn’t intend for it to see, featuring such common issues as:
   1. “Thin/Duplicate” content
   2. “Missing” links
   3. “Misplaced” tags
   4. Confusing site architecture and link authority signals
2. Site Speed: JavaScript can also affect site speed, which is another important ranking factor. If the JavaScript load event takes over 5 seconds, this can negatively impact your content’s ability to be indexed.

Can Conductor Searchlight Crawl JavaScript?

Our partners at DeepCrawl have you covered. DeepCrawl’s technology is integrated in Conductor Searchlight, and they’ve enhanced their crawler to help our customers understand the technical health of pages that use JavaScript. Deepcrawl downloads pages with a headless browser like a bot would, then renders the pages using JavaScript before analyzing to extract the content. That means you can see the content on the page with and without rendering.

By enabling this latest feature in Conductor Searchlight, you’ll be able to:

• Find out if content and links modified by JavaScript are rendered correctly for Google to index.
• Find out how crawlable your pages are with and without JavaScript rendering enabled.
• Detect JavaScript URL changes including redirects, meta redirects, JavaScript location.
• Cache resources found in a crawl so that your server is not overloaded.

And There’s a Bonus! The Bulk Website Speed Test

This feature can benefit marketers who have little to no JavaScript as well because it also collects a variety of site speed metrics at scale. Long gone are the days of testing site speed page by page. Now you can get the following statistics for any page you crawl:

• Time to First Byte
• First Paint (FP)
• First Contentful Paint (FCP)
• Document Content Loaded (DCL)
• Total Page Load Time

So What Does It All Mean?

Ensuring your site is properly deploying JavaScript can really make or break overall site performance, for humans and bots alike. With these new tools from DeepCrawl, you’ll be fully prepared to identify these issues and make sure that beautiful site of yours is working at peak performance. Happy crawling.

Ready to roll up your JavaScript sleeves and try out Conductor Searchlight for yourself? Let a platform-certified specialist take you out for a test drive.

The post JavaScript SEO 101: How to Crawl JavaScript appeared first on Conductor Spotlight.

Conductor Spotlight

Do Private Blog Networks (PBNs) Still Work in 2018? Should You Build One?

If you use SEO to promote your website, you most probably have heard of PBNs (Private Blog Networks). The concept isn’t very difficult to understand (although it is difficult to execute), but with the overload of information out there, you might be conflicted.

 

Do PBNs still work in 2018? Are there any risks? Well, the short answers are yes and yes. So should you build one? That’s up to you. However, this article has to purpose to help you make an educated decision. This won’t be a guide on how to build one; however, if you’ve thought about building a PBN for your websites, then make sure you’re giving this a good read.

 

 

1. What Is a PBN?
2. Do PBNs Still Work?
   1. How Google tricked everyone and was always one step ahead
   2. The fine line between PBN and owning multiple sites
3. PBN Advantages & Disadvantages
   1. Advantages
   2. Disadvantages
4. Should You Build a PBN in 2018?

 

Disclaimer: Just to get things straight from the start, we do NOT recommend building a PBN. They are risky and against Google’s terms of service. They also cost both time and money which you could be investing in safer and more efficient, evergreen tactics.

 

What Is a PBN?

 

PBN stands for Private Blog Network. Long story short, it’s a group of websites that a webmaster owns for the sole purpose of boosting the rank of other websites.

 

These networks fall into the BlackHat SEO link building tactics category. Obviously, at first, they didn’t. But after people started abusing them, Google took action. Before 2014, PBNs were the stuff. The hype was high and everyone started building them. Everyone wanted to get in for the ride.

 

That was until Google completely destroyed a few PBN services and some popular marketing bloggers’ PBNs. Here’s just one example of a single PBN service out of many that have fallen:

 

 

The truth is that PBNs are nothing more than Web 2.0s on steroids. Instead of using subdomains from WordPress.com and Blogger, you use expired domains that already have authority built to them. If you purchase the right expired domains and build the network properly, you can get yourself a nice asset.

 

In order to avoid getting caught by Google, BlackHat SEOs have to constantly hide their traces. What a tiresome struggle… This list of traces can contain:

 

Whois Info: If you have 10 domains that all link to one another and are all registered publicly under the same name, everyone is going to know it’s a PBN. Now most of the time the details aren’t public and you can also purchase Whois protection for extra fees (sometimes offered for free) but I’ve heard stories of Google having access to Whois info anyway.

 

IP Address & Hosting: If more websites are on the same IP, they’re definitely connected in some way. That’s why shared hosting accounts are dangerous. If someone spams that IP address, you’re also on the list. You can purchase dedicated IPs for each domain to fix this. (Not only for PBN sites. Do this for all your sites. It helps keep things safe.)

 

Company name and contact details: Some countries legally require you to post this information if you monetize your site in any way (you do, since it’s part of your marketing strategy, so if someone reports you, you risk getting fined).

 

Design, Code, Formatting, Content: Many times, people simply duplicate these websites by copy pasting and changing some basic aspects, like colors and logo. However, the platforms and themes they use are always the same.

 

Analytics Accounts: Have 10 sites under the same Analytics Account? Good luck evading Google.

 

Script IDs: If you have different tools that require tracking, you’ll need separate subscriptions for each and every one of them, otherwise anyone could figure out the connection between two sites.

 

Now these are the most basic ones and they are often publicly available. However, some people say (including me) that Google might be looking at other things as well:

 

E-mail accounts: Register anything under the same e-mail, especially if it’s a Gmail and you’ll end up linking everything to it. One mistake and you can compromise it.

 

Location: Have you logged into the same e-mail account or worked on all your PBN sites under the same IP at home? Good job, you just told Google you own them. You need proxies and proxies to keep things clean.

 

Doesn’t this sound sort of like a hacker or criminal hiding his !@% from the police? I actually never understood why Google doesn’t try to make these things illegal. I mean… if you’re spamming the internet and accessing the website with bots without the owner’s permission… If you’re constantly pretending to be someone else… Shouldn’t this kind of stuff be fined? I guess they either can’t or they just want people to keep doing them.

 

Now call me paranoid, but we use so many services from Google, such as Chrome, Analytics, MyBusiness and Gmail. They’re all owned by Google. Am I saying that Google is reading your e-mail to figure out if you have a PBN or if you’re buying links? No. But… Maybe?

 

Your Gmail account is probably connected to your smartphone. You have the internet connection on everywhere these days, so Google knows your location. You and another webmaster appear at the same location and 2 hours before your websites start linking to each other? Just saying…

 

Those are just speculations but think of it: If you wanted not to be caught owning two different hosting accounts, would you register under the same e-mail? Most definitely not. I’m not saying that someone from Google is reading your private e-mails and spying through your webcam. I’m just saying that there is a possibility that some sort of algorithm is out there, tracing administrative relationships between websites.

 

Do PBNs Still Work?

 

You’re probably wondering if PBNs still work. How much has Google evolved and how good is it at catching these schemes in 2018?

 

Well, despite what many people think after 2014, PBNs still work and they will work as long as backlinks are a ranking factor, something that won’t change very soon.

 

How Google tricked everyone and was always one step ahead

 

When PBNs started to become popular, I’m sure that both parties were somewhat terrified. The webmasters of getting caught and Google of people discovering the ultimate BlackHat SEO technique.

 

However, Google was also one step ahead. I’ll explain:

 

You see, as mentioned before, Google cares about backlinks. Link building is still a very important ranking factor. They’ve tried removing the links from the algorithm, but apparently, the search engine results are worse:

 

 

A PBN can’t really be detected if it’s done properly. There’s simply no way of finding out, or at least being sure. Everybody links to other websites. People know each other, they talk and they give links. If you banned solely on patterns, innocent people doing White Hat SEO might get hurt. You might as well ban everyone, right?

 

So what did Google do? How did they catch the ones that were truly thinking of building a PBN as a BlackHat way of ranking their money sites high? Well… they didn’t.

 

Instead, Google targeted a few popular PBN services and some popular marketing bloggers that were using them and blogging about them.

 

Today we took action on a large guest blog network. A reminder about the spam risks of guest blogging: http://t.co/rc9O82fjfn

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) March 19, 2014

 

But how? How could Google possibly identify an entire network of private websites, built by professionals and experts in the BlackHat SEO industry? Well… it’s an easy answer. They bought the service. It’s that simple.

 

I mean… everyone could. Even Matt Cutts. Just order the service and know exactly what PBN sites are used. Worst part? Many people and local business owners had to suffer. Their websites got penalized and they did not even know how, because their SEO companies acted as intermediaries and bought the PBN service instead. It happens all the time: “Guaranteed #1 position.” and also guaranteed “It wasn’t me boss” in case of penalty.

 

How did Google get to the marketing bloggers? I have no idea, but I’m sure they were targeted. Don’t you think it’s kind of strange that immediately after, many popular marketing and SEO bloggers got their PBNs penalized, while hundreds of other unknown players kept saying that they worked? Had it been just a Google update and no manual verification, it could’ve been a disaster.

 

After getting penalized, both Spencer Haws and Pat Flynn (two very popular niche site builders and bloggers, you should check them out) turned 180 degrees, writing about how much time and money they put into their PBNs just to lose everything in one second. And then the almighty phrase started showing up everywhere: “PBNs are DEAD!” No… they’re not. They’re just very risky. However, people stopped jumping head first into it.

 

The fine line between PBN and owning multiple sites

 

I collaborated with a pretty big nutrition and fitness company. It was really hard work as I did all the content and promotion (although I had nothing to do with bodybuilding). Anyway, I did a lot of research before writing anything and managed to pull up great quality content that increased the organic traffic of the website by 30% in under 6 months.

 

Bragging aside, one thing that was really difficult about that particular project was that there were simply no websites to get links from. Why? Because almost all the websites were owned by 3-4 companies that were direct competitors. At least that’s what my boss told me, but I tend to believe him since he’d been in the market for over 10 years.

 

I started doing some research to find link opportunities and found out that these websites were all linking to one another.

 

See where I’m going with this?

 

While the fact that I had nowhere to get links from was frustrating, the fact that I discovered a PBN was fascinating.

 

There was just only one issue:

 

This wasn’t really a PBN. Nobody was getting penalized. I even reported this to John Mueller but my request was completely ignored. Why? Well… probably because the websites were completely legitimate businesses, with their own phone numbers, teams and services. You could very well order products from them and they would send them to you under their name.

 

And that’s when I started thinking that the PBN issue is much bigger than it seems. Is that really a PBN? Not sure… Can Google detect it and consider it a PBN? Probably. Should it penalize it? I don’t think so.

 

I believe that multiple websites from the same company can create a network that dominates the first pages of Google. On multiple positions.

 

I did a little research just to prove that this is the case for various markets and countries. While looking into the motorcycle niche, after only 2-3 searches, I bumped into this motorcycle news website (motorcyclenews.com) that ranks very well for some keywords.

 

I then used SpyOnWeb.com to determine if any other websites are linked to it via IP or some code. Turns out that many are. The relationship has been established through the Google Adsense account.

 

 

Then, I used cognitiveSEO’s site explorer to take a quick look at what websites are linking to it:

 

 

I only searched some websites that are in the same niche, like performancebikes.co.uk, ride.co.uk, classicbike.co.uk and mcnsport.co.uk. They all link to motorcyclenews.com. These are only 4 sites, but there could be others that are not so easily correlated.

 

Could this be considered a PBN? Maybe. But they’re all legitimate, authority sites that sell bikes or offer some sort of service. All of them generate organic traffic, offer interesting and good quality content and some even have physical, printed magazines.

 

Is that unethical anymore? Should it be against Google’s TOS?

 

Imagine that you build a very successful coffee shop. How do you expand? Do you make the same shop bigger and bigger until it eats up the whole city? No, you open a new one in another city and another city and so on. But do you make cheaper, worse coffee and just recommend people to your main shop in the primary city if they want to drink the good one? Of course not. You serve them the best you can if you want them to stay. And when they visit the initial city, they’ll know where to go.

 

It’s the same with these websites. Sure, you can’t call them all Starbucks, but you can build new ones all the time when you want to expand and they’ll all survive and thrive as long as they all provide quality to the users. And not even interlinking or using the same IP will be able to get them penalized.

 

Google’s only request is to provide quality to the users, so that they keep coming to Google to search and find YOU, because that’s how Google survives. If bad websites rank at the top because of some PBN scheme, people won’t like Google anymore.

 

Most PBNs are websites that lack design, personality and usefulness. They just fill the web and use Google’s resources (for crawling, indexing and other things).

 

However, if these websites are good, I don’t think anyone will have a problem. You can’t even call them a private blog network, at least not in the BlackHat SEO way of saying. In my opinion, it’s perfectly White Hat to have multiple high quality websites.

 

However, you can still get penalized…

 

PBN Advantages & Disadvantages

 

Although PBNs do have advantages, in our opinion, the disadvantages overweight them so we do not recommend that you build a PBN.

 

However, we will outline them, just to make sure you’ll get a good overview of things. 

 

Advantages:

 

More efficient with ranking: From all the BlackHat SEO techniques, PBNs are probably the most efficient. The better the expired domain names you purchase, the faster you’ll see the results.

Harder to get caught: Also, it will take some time until you get caught, if you get caught. You’ll have to be always looking over your shoulder and erase your every trace. It’s not an easy lifestyle, but it’s safer than blasting links with GSA Search Engine Ranker.

Easy in theory: Buy expired domains at a domain auction, build websites and put content on them, cover up all traces, link to money site. The part with covering up all traces is a little bit more difficult, but you’ll get the hang of it. That is if Google doesn’t hang you first.

Extra profit: You can also profit off PBNs by selling links to other websites. As long as they’re not direct competitors, it doesn’t really matter. However, keep in mind that this exposes you to risks. Someone could compromise your network.

Full control: This one is the best one. I have to admit…. don’t you just like it when you’re in control? No more “Here’s my nice content, will you link to it?”

 

Disadvantages:

 

High cost: At first it might sound cheap. Some shared hosting, a couple of IPs, some domain names and some content. Couple of hundred bucks? Well… make that double. Then multiply it by 50. If you really want to do this the right way, you’ll need good hosting, tons of IPs, proxies and tools. Sure, you could only be spending $ 1.000 on your network if you’re in a low competition market, but will the investment be worth? For high competitiveness you need to buy expired domains that have a high authority and you need a lot of them, at least 10-25. You also need to make sure they aren’t spammed. They can go for thousands of dollars each and we haven’t discussed the content yet. You think 500 word spinned articles will do the job? Think again, or the Panda’s gonna catch you.

Takes a long time: Although when you start linking the results are seen rather fast, the whole setup process is time consuming. You start with one site, then expand, but each takes time.

Difficult to manage: You’ll also have to constantly take care of your network. Excluding the content that you need to keep posting, each site comes with its own problems like SPAM, hackers, bills… and remember you have to do them all under a different name, IP and probably device as well, just to make sure.

Can get caught: The worst part is obviously that you always have the risk of getting caught. Is it worth investing all this time and money for it?

 

Should You Build a PBN in 2018?

 

This really depends on who you are as a person. Do you like taking risks? Do you care about Google’s TOS? Some people see Google as this evil entity that controls the internet and would love to profit off it.

 

You see, the truth is that great websites on Google, that always rank at the top, don’t need to build PBNs.

Webmasters that provide great content, that network and connect, that promote their content, products and services properly don’t need to use any kind of schemes to get to the top.

They will always be there or at least they will get there at some point, because the users dictate this.

 

So should you build a PBN? Probably not. We consider it to be wiser to spend all that money and time to develop one website first. Then you can expand to another website and another one and have your little legit network of high quality websites.

Spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on simply buying expired domains and filling them with content you don’t really care about instead of spending it into user experience, quality content creation, promotion and better services doesn’t seem very wise.

 

At the end of the day, it’s a mix of time, skill and luck that decidess whether you’ll get caught with a PBN or not. You might get caught after the first 2 weeks. You might never be caught and even your grand grandchildren will use your PBNs to profit. However…

 

If you’re in for the long run SEO game, you’d better stay away from PBNs and focus on evergreen White Hat SEO techniques.

 

Search Engines are always evolving and getting better at detecting tricks every day. Why not focus on playing fair and actually improve the skills that truly matter? Why waste your time with learning how to hide when you can learn how to create better experiences?

 

Whatever side you’re on, we’re curious about your experience with private blog networks. Have you ever owned one? Have you ever tried a PBN service? Have you got penalized? Do you still own one and does it still work? Let us know in the comments. 

The post Do Private Blog Networks (PBNs) Still Work in 2018? Should You Build One? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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How We More than Doubled Conversions & Leads for a New ICO [Case Study]

Posted by jkuria

Summary

We helped Repux generate 253% more leads, nearly 100% more token sales and millions of dollars in incremental revenue during their initial coin offering (ICO) by using our CRO expertise.

The optimized site also helped them get meetings with some of the biggest names in the venture capital community — a big feat for a Poland-based team without the pedigree typically required (no MIT, Stanford, Ivy League, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft background).

The details:

Repux is a marketplace that lets small and medium businesses sell anonymized data to developers. The developers use the data to build “artificially intelligent” apps, which they then sell back to businesses. Business owners and managers use the apps to make better business decisions.

Below is the original page, which linked to a dense whitepaper. We don’t know who decided that an ICO requires a long, dry whitepaper, but this seems to be the norm!

This page above suffers from several issues:

• The headline is pretty meaningless (“Decentralized Data & Applications Protocol for SMEs). Remember, as David Ogilvy noted, 90% of the success of an ad (in our case, a landing page) is determined by the headline. Visitors quickly scan the headline and if it doesn’t hold their interest, bounce immediately. With so much content on the web, attention is scarce — the average time spent on a page is a few seconds and the average bounce rate is about 85%.
• The call to action is “Get Whitelisted,” which is also meaningless. What"s in it for me? Why should I want to “Get Whitelisted”?
• A lack of urgency to act. There is a compelling reason to do so, but it was not being clearly articulated ("Get 50% OFF on the tokens if you buy before a certain date.")
• Lack of “evidentials”: Evidentials are elements that lend credibility or reduce anxiety and include things like mentions in trusted publications, well-known investors or advisors, industry seals, association affiliations, specific numbers (e.g. 99% Net Promoter Score), and so on.
• Too much jargon and arcane technical language: Our research using Mouseflow’s on-page feedback feature showed that the non-accredited-investor ICO audience isn’t sophisticated. They typically reside outside of the US and have a limited command of English. Most are younger men (18–35) who made money from speculative activities on the Internet (affiliate marketing, Adsense arbitrage, and of course other crypto-currencies). When we surveyed them, many did not initially understand the concept. In our winning page (below), we dumbed down things a lot!

Below is the new page that produced a 253% gain in leads (email opt-ins). Coupled with the email follow-up sequence shown below, it produced a nearly 100% gain in token sales.

Winning page (above the fold):

Here are few of the elements that we believe made a difference:

• Much clearer headline (which we improved upon further in a subsequent treatment).
• Simple explanation of what the company is doing
• Urgency to buy now — get 50% off on tokens if you buy before the countdown timer expires
• Solicited and used press mentions
• Social proof from the Economist; tapping a meme can be powerful as it"s always easier to swim downstream than upstream. “Data is the new oil” is a current meme.

More persuasive elements (below the fold):

In the second span (the next screenful below the fold) we added a few more persuasive elements.

For one, we highlighted key Repux accomplishments and included bios of two advisors who are well known in the crypto-community.

Having a working platform was an important differentiator because only one in 10 ICOs had a working product. Most launched with just a whitepaper!

A survey of the token buyers showed that mentioning well-known advisors worked — several respondents said it was the decisive factor in persuading them to buy. Before, the advisors were buried in a little-visited page. We featured them more prominently.

Interestingly, this seemed to cut both ways. One of the non-contributors said he was initially interested because of a certain advisor’s involvement. He later chose not to contribute because he felt this advisor’s other flagship project had been mismanaged!

We also used 3 concrete examples to show how the marketplace functions and how the tokens would be used:

When your product is highly abstract and technical, using concrete examples aids understanding. We also found this to be true when pitching to professional investors. They often asked, “Can you give me an example of how this would work in the real world?”

We like long-form pages because unlike a live selling situation, there"s no opportunity for a back-and-forth conversation. The page must therefore overcorrect and address every objection a web visitor might have.

Lastly, we explained why Repux is likely to succeed. We quoted Victor Hugo for good measure, to create an air of inevitability:

How much impact did Victor Hugo have? I don’t know, but the page did much better overall. Our experience shows that radical redesigns (that change many page elements at the same time) produce higher conversion lifts.

Once you attain a large lift, if you like, you can then do isolation testing of specific variables to determine how much each change contributed.

13% lift: Simplified alternate page

The page below led to a further 13% lift.

The key elements we changed were:

• Simplified the headline even further: “Repux Monetizes Data from Millions of Small Enterprises.” What was previously the headline is now stated in the bullet points.
• Added a “5 Reasons Why Repux is Likely to Succeed” section: When you number things, visitors are more likely to engage with the content. They may not read all the text but will at least skim over the numbered sub-headlines to learn what all the points are — just like power abhors a vacuum, the mind can’t seem to stand incompleteness!

We’ve seen this in Mouseflow heatmaps. You can do this test yourself: List a bunch of bullet points versus a numbered list and with a compelling headline: The 7 Reasons Why 20,0000 Doctors Recommend Product X or The 3 Key Things You Need to Know to Make an Informed Decision.

Follow-up email sequence

We also created a follow-up email sequence for Repux that led to more token sales.

As you can see, the average open rate is north of 40%, and the goal attained (token sales) is above 8%. According to Mailchimp, the average email marketing campaign open rate is about 20%, while the average CTR is about 3%.

We got more sales than most people get clicks. Here’s a link to three sample emails we sent.

Our emails are effective because:

• They’re educational (versus pure sales pitch). This is also important to avoid “burning out” your list. If all you do is send pitch after pitch, soon you’ll be lucky to get a 1.3% open rate!
• They employ storytelling. We use a technique known as the “Soap Opera Sequence.” Each email creates anticipation for the next one and also refers to some interesting fact in previous ones. If a person would only have opened one email, they are now likely to want to open future ones as well as look up older ones to “solve the puzzle.” This leads to higher open rates for the entire sequence, and more sales.
• The calls to action are closer to the bottom, having first built up some value. Counterintuitively, this works better, but you should always test radically different approaches.

Email is a massively underutilized medium. Most businesses are sitting on goldmines (their email list) without realizing it! You can — and should — make at least 2x to 3x as many sales from your email list as you do from direct website sales.

It takes a lot of work to write an effective sequence, but once you do you can run it on autopilot for years, making money hand over fist. As customer acquisition gets ever more competitive and expensive, how well you monetize your list can make the difference between success and failure.

Conclusion

To increase the conversion rate on your website and get more sales, leads, or app downloads, follow these simple steps:

• Put in the work to understand why the non-converting visitors are leaving and then systematically address their specific objections. This is what “research-driven” optimization means, as opposed to redesign based purely aesthetic appeal or “best practices.”

• Find out why the converting visitors took the desired action — and then accentuate these things.

• Capture emails and use a follow-up sequence to educate and tell stories to those who were not convinced by the website. Done correctly, this can produce 2x to 3x as many sales as the website.

Simple, but not easy. It takes diligence and discipline to do these things well. But if you do, you will be richly rewarded!

And if you’d like to learn more about conversion rate optimization or review additional case studies, we encourage you to take our free course.

Thanks to Jon Powell, Hayk Saakian, Vlad Mkrtumyan, and Nick Jordan for reading drafts of this post.

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