One Internet Marketer who has gotten excellent results with SEO, including being on page one for Link Building for one of his sites, is Daniel Mcgonagle. Internet Marketing with Daniel McGonagle
When you first started with the Internet how long did it take you to realize the importance of SEO?
Daniel: Well, when I first started in what turned out to be a long love-hate relationship with SEO and the search engines, I realized that not many people knew how to do it, nor were they committed enough to becoming students of SEO long enough to maintain a good grasp of SEO knowledge that would benefit them.
I also realized that free traffic from the search engines was something I really wanted becaus eit allowed me to do two things
1- Create websites filled with content that gave good value
2- To have this content bring in traffic and sales just by doing a few things right, consistently
Once I got my head around off-page optimization and on-page optimization, I quickly realized just how powerful it is, and can be for others. Understanding and appling good SEO practices result sin an extremely high ROI fo marketers and it allows the marketer to build a resource (his/her website) that brings in traffic daily, and targeted traffic at that.
Did you find acquiring SEO knowledge straight forward or did you find a lot of the available information (on the Internet) misleading? Out dated?
Daniel: Oh yes, I definitely found read and implemented a lot of different SEO practices and discovered a lot of surprises along the way. However, unless you know about SEO competition, and link building and what “competition” really means, the newcomer to SEO doesn’t realize how much wool is being pulled over their eyes.
SEO in and of itself is straightforward but it takes a lot of trial and error to fully understand that personally. What works for SEO is really a combination of things, like using social media, link bait, getting backlinks, writing good content and so on…
If “good SEO” were to be dumbed-down to a few things, it would be to….
Daniel:1- give the potential or exisitng site vistors what they want; good unique content
2- give the search engines what they want; good unique content and a site possessive of some sort of authority
3- and to make sure your website gets backlinks and votes from other good, related websites and/or content
After doing this for a few years, that’s as straightforward as I can be when discussing SEO without deliving into a lot of minutiae
How much of the information about SEO posted on the Internet is outdated? What about the accuracey of the information?
Daniel: I don’t really have a number on what percentage of the information about SEO is outdated, accurate, updated etc… but what I do know is that there are a few dozen websites out there that should be required reading for people interested in up to date and accurate information.
Accuracy however, is a tricky thing because many SEO bloggers are putting information out there that’s made to seem important when it really isn’t truly helpful. SEO for a website is a personal and individual, case-by-case basis so not all “recommended” aspects and strategies for SEO are applicable to webmasters.
Some webmasters in certain niches may have zero need to apply social media strategies because of the demographics of their target audience, whereas some niches and industries are better-served with more of an emphasis on social media over other outlets like article marketing and article directories, for example.
Someone starting out today what would you advise SEO students to focus their attention?
Daniel: I would advise SEO students to focus more on researching thei rniches and demographics very carefully prior ot entering into the “fray”, to avid wasting time on avenue sof site exposure that may/may not help them realize a solid ROI on thei rtime investments. I would also urge them to focus on delivering content that is of value to their readers. One other thing I woul durge is to interact wit hthier readers, cutomers, and clients, especiall yin today’s age wher eit seem slike everyone is on Facebook or Twitter or evne just leaving comments on their blogs.
Projecting into a year from now what changes in SEO do you expect will have occured?
Daniel: Well, there’s so much manipulation of the search engines going on right now, which is basically what SEO is manipulating your sites to get noticed, high, better, and faster by the search engines.
But the search engines are all businesses, too and it’s good ot keep that in mind whenever some new “seo tactics” come out that promise high rankings. The search engines will go out of business if they’re not delivering what their users are looking for, and it’s not any different for websites, too. If search engines and websites do not please the users and/or readers, both will suffer, and big businesses like Yahoo and Google and Bing, which basically control what happens for the rankings of your sites, will tak emeasure sto ensure they’re delivering what their users want.
Which brings us yet again, full circle…to what really works for SEO and what will ALWAYS work for SEO; good content and good backlinks
I do foresee that while search engines will remain the biggest sourc eof traffic for websites, there will still be an increased profitability in delving into social media and other traffic sources for targeted traffic.
Social media DOES have the potential to take the search engines out of the equation since there’s so many ways to get traffic from them. However, a smentioned previously they are all BIG businesses and will not “go gently into the good night”, and have already taken steps to incorporate social media content like Twitter tweets into their search results.
Therefore, social media is becoming mor eimportant nowadays an dI see this as a continuig trend, and something to not be ingored by SEO folks.
Was there any one thing that you found to be the turning point in your understanding of SEO?
Daniel: Yes, the turning point for me was understanding that no website exists as an island, meaning that fantastic, world-changing content only serve sits purpose if people actually read it. “build it and they will come ” only works in movies like the Field Of Dreams.
You need votes/mentions/backlinks in order to get seen by your target audience, which means you need backlinks in order to direct people towards your content.
Now there are backlinks whose sole purpose is to grab a direct visitor and there are backlinks designed to direct traffic and increase rankings. Understanding the difference between the two and utilizing them properly is what made me understand SEO as I do today, but it is still a learning process for me and every other SEO out there who knows that the SEO landscape is always changing
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