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The 3 things most SEOs get wrong … and how to get ‘em right

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We are almost(!) ready to open our new coaching program.  We already have our own ideas, but even with two brains we could be missing something!  So please share your biggest SEO problems; ask us those burning questions;  tell us what you most want in our coaching program; and just what is currently missing from all the others.

NOTE: This video should play on Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari browsers – including Mobile Safari (hello, iPad!).
  • “Should I use nofollow?”
    [Kinda vague – Leslie gets REAL specific, and the answer may surprise you]
  • “How many keywords should I target?”
    [Wrong question – Dan gives you the RIGHT one, and how to answer it]
  • “Do You Recommend <Insert Easy Sounding Scheme Here>?”
    [Is it too good to be true? Might it even HURT you? Here’s how to tell…]
  • Plus the BIG question … “What the heck is the SEO BrainTrust?”
    [you’ll have to stick around to the end to find out]

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Comments

  2. Hi,

    Was wondering if your program would be covering seo for blogs and any affiliate marketing?

    Thank You
    Mike

  5. Help please send me the LOGIN information I signed up OCT 1 and have yet to get any emails. Please help out a fellow Stomper Dan or Leslie…Thanks!

    • You should both have an email directly from me with login info – sent from my SEO Research Labs email in case it’s a whitelisting issue.

  6. I have 2 questions. For the first question, it may seem like I am splitting hais but I do want to clarify, when looking over the SEO Braintrust membership rates, I see it says that the “Video Only” membership “includes access to WEEKLY training videos”, and that the “Full Membership” includes access to ALL training videos. Does this mean that there will be videos available to the “Full” members that are not part of the “WEEKLY” training videos and thus will not be available to the “Video Only” members.

    My other question relates to top level domains and URLs and I think it will be best if I explained with examples. Let’s say I wanted to rank for the keyword “computer monitors”, which of the following URLs would be best ( for arguments sake, lets assume they are all available)

    Remember, I want to rank for the term “computer monitors”

    http://www.computermonitors.com/computermonitors.html
    http://www.computermonitors.com/computermonitors/computermonitors.html
    http://www.computermonitors.com/computermonitors/model1234vc.html

    Lastly, if I wanted to rank for a hypothetical brand and model # (lets say “Arvinia 240CL”), which is better

    http://www.mysite.com/arvinia-240cl.html
    http://www.mysite.com/arvinia-240cl/arvinia-240cl.html
    http://www.mysite.com/computermonitors/arvinia-240cl.html

    (Does it make a difference if I use arvinia-240cl with the hyphen as in the example above or would it be better if I used arvinia240cl without the hyphen

    Thanks and looking forward to your reply

    Michael

  7. hello there

    could i ask a question here …leslie says in the video that links from socila networking sites are of no value…..im a newbie stomper and there is a course on there were they give you directions on linking to different social networking sites and then back to 2nd tier pageson your site

    is this wrong information ?

    • John, not sure what course you’re talking about but if you could let me know it would be a lot easier to give you an intelligent answer. Specifically, doing a bunch of automated social bookmarking (a popular scheme) is pretty much a waste of resources.

  8. Have you ever tested out article marketing? I’m really doubtful of it and yet I see so many (even StomperNet, whom I usually trust) absolutely swear by it as a great way to drive traffic and bring in affiliate sales. When I look at the view counts for the most viewed articles on EZineArticles (supposedly the biggest and best article directory), the top articles for the past 90 days have only been viewed maybe 1000 times. I’ve been meaning to test it, but I just haven’t been able to bring myself to do it yet because I feel like it’ll be such a waste of time. Any thoughts?

    • There are good ways to do it, and stupid ways to do it. Most of the advice you get out there is about the stupid ways. We did a case study for Link Liberation, where one of my students got a TON of links with article marketing, but he did it the smart way. 😉

      Link Liberation Case Study: How Eric S. Got 45273 Links!

      Eric’s results are definitely not typical. He’s got a knack for execution.

      • Thanks. I remember watching that video a while back, but I had forgotten about it. Just an observation, but if you’re worried about brand quality, his method certainly makes far more sense than submitting to something like Ezine because you can choose which websites will syndicate your articles and avoid the more spammy ones. Kudos to him for doing it the smart way.

        • Right – the article databases are worth using as a way to kind of “beat the bushes” and find people who want content, but if all you do is submit a bunch of stuff to directories… as you pointed out, not so great.

  9. I would like to learn what are the most effective ways to build links back to my sites. I have seen lots of no nos on videos, but quite little how to do it right.

    Mikko

  10. Hi,

    I might be pretty late here. Kind of ignored seobraintrust first and now could beat myself for it.

    Question on the video:
    You talk about 5-10% (-15% for double listing) of the traffic from a keyword to find out if it is worth your time. Is that based on broad, phrase or exact match?

    Other question:
    Use of anchor text – do you use some other keywords in external (and even internal) anchor text to make your backlinking not look so unnatural or just the 1 – 3 keywords you try to get that page to rank?

    Hope I still can get in to the SEO Brain Trust. Until now not very impressed with StomperNet (other than the neteffect stuff).

    Thanks,
    Bora

  11. Dan and Leslie – I should accuse you guys of content stuffing – wow. You packed so much value into an hour and I loved it! I found the value you delivered to be immediately actionable and I appreciate the pre-condition that these practices are not for everyone based on the number of pages on ones site. It really speaks to the integrity when a willingness to pay the price of admission is the only determining factor.

    I find the whole follow, no follow topic a little confusion and for now I have relied on writing good content and commenting on authority blogs in my niche that I truly feel have added value. It would be interesting to better understand the guidelines you shared and measure the results over time.

    I think your program sounds amazing, perhaps not right for me at this stage, but certainly something I would recommend for those who have adequate pages to really make this work. Good luck with your project and thank you for this excellent resource.

    Have a blessed day!

    James

  12. I have two websites, a blog that I’ve had for years and a new e-commerce site. Both are related to fishing/boating. I put text links to my two main sales pages of my e-commerce site in the sidebar of my blog. Now there are over a thousand links pointing to each of the sales pages from the blog. I only have a few dozen links to the sales pages from other sources. What I’m afraid of is that the links from the blog are going to look like spam and will do more harm then good. What do you think?

    • Sounds like you need to be marketing the eCommerce site so it gets other links on its own. I assume there’s a fair amount of click-through traffic from those links?

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