Offer HN: SEO Help | Hacker News Reader

Offer HN: SEO Help

123 pointsSebastianSh60 comments

Hi guys!

I've been lurking here for a while, and I feel like giving something to the community.

You all, who help out the entrepreneurs, are more valuable than you think.

I want to help your startup with SEO. On-page optimization, keyword-usage, titles, descriptions, link building advice, even some Internet Marketing advice.

I've been working as an SEO consultant (on my own) in Sweden for almost two years.

In spite of me being in Sweden, most of my clients are from the US, and I've even held a couple of speaking gigs in LA, SF and NY for SMBs.

Some clients: IKEA, Scandinavian Airlines (through marketing firms I work with), as well as some niche clothing stores.

You could ask your questions here or email hn.seohelp@gmail.com

I need: The URL of the website; some keywords and what your site is about.

Have a great day, everyone!

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Google have a great SEO Starter Guide up at http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimiza... . I would love to hear how your techniques in a more general sense are different from or build on top of what Google are already providing for free to the public?

Google's Starter Guide is to SEO as "Teach Yourself Javascript in 24 Hours" is to programming. It is kind of difficult to describe the ocean in terms of the marginal change in experience from getting your feet wet.

I get the analogy, but after quite a lot of time making websites, I'm still not sure what I should do besides what is mentioned in this doc to improve organic listings. Perhaps you can take a small area of that ocean and give me an example?

From what I can remember, Google's SEO guides are more focused to on-site optimization; "design well and provide good content, the rest will come naturally".

While an SEO consultant might use this approach it is not quite the most proactive strategy. SEO comprises of so many things outsite on-site optimization.

I encourage you to read SEO Warrior, a book published by O'Reilly that covers different aspects on the topic.

We have also been using the #seo channel on irc.freenode.net in an attempt to build a collaborating SEO community. You are welcome to stop by and ask away.

Yeah, you're right there.

Basically, Google is saying that if you build amazing content, and structure your website accordingly, you will get high quality backlinks.

If you've spent one day trying to get your site a better rank you know that it's almost impossible. Especially if you're a nobody.

You should be careful recommending books on SEO.

Google and other search engines tweak their algorithms daily, and many things can be outdated.

Join IRC-channels and forums - learn from others mistakes (know where it went wrong), and simply put - just do it.

The worst thing that could happen is if you get sandboxed (removed.)

The #1 issue in SEO is acquiring links from sites other than your own, primarily links with the anchor text of the terms you desire to rank for. Google only alludes to this in their guidelines, and gives the topic about 60 words on two pages, with helpful advice such as "Know what social networks are." and "Reach out to people in your community."

Here's some actual helpful advice, for software companies: you should provide as many reasons as possible why linking to your website helps out the linker. There are as many ways to do this as there are ways to motivate people. One obvious one which non-programmers find difficult to duplicate is to provide some functionality for other people's websites via copy/paste code (called a widget), then promoting the widget. The widget contains a link back to the originating site, with anchor text that you pick.

For example, I have a client that produces something spiritually similar to help desk software. They should have a widget which lets you ask a question of BIG_CORP on BIG_CORP's website, with "[Help Desk] powered by $CLIENT." under it. The actual functionality is simple: submit a new issue straight into their help desk system. That's a triple win: BIG_CORP reduces support costs and gets higher customer loyalty, BIG_CORP's customers get a streamlined experience versus the traditional "email in a problem, get a ticket, pray a human sees it", and $CLIENT ranks higher for any help desk related keyword they care to target based entirely legitimately on their ability to convince BIG_CORP that they are the best help desk solution on the market.

Just out of curiosity; I would like to see your own pages.

I find it somewhat odd that SebastianSh is unable (or unwilling) to grant that simple request.

In other professions (web design, software development, etc) this is usually a sign of missing expertise. What kind of designer or programmer wouldn't proudly show his/her latest creations when asked to do so?

However, in this case there might be another reason. Maybe the customers don't want to be used as a reference? This leads to an interesting question:

Is it bad for business to publicly admit the use of SEO techniques?

I don't actually do any SEO work for the people asking for help - I simply give them advice and suggestions on how to improve their sites.

You are right about publicly admitting to have used SEO. A lot of my clients have requested NDAs, but some haven't. Unfortunately for them, admitting to have used SEO in their minds devalues the company.

You might want to try some of Patrick's tips (of Bingo Card Creator fame) here:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/07/17/seo-for-software-compani...

I'd also suggest taking a look at http://www.seobook.com/

The one thing I would say is to look very carefully at what you want to achieve via SEO. I'm fairly certain that the majority of potential customers in our sector (information security) don't want to fill in a form, although we do have a few visitors. For us our site is more about communicating what we do for our customers, than getting people to invite us to do work for them, but of course that's a world of difference from trying to get someone to sign up to a web app.

I totally agree with you!

Basic SEO knowledge could point out flaws, but it does take some experience to make a plan/strategy and purpose.

"Would SEO help you or would it be pointless?"

If you own a pizzeria in Gainesville, FL - why should you rank #1 for the term "Pizza"?

I love what I do, and I hope people who get replies from me see that! :)

I'm fairly certain that the majority of potential customers in our sector (information security) don't want to fill in a form, although we do have a few visitors.

We are in the same sector and have had great success with the "step signup" process - i.e. contact forms.

YMMV. But mid-range corporates feel happy about such things.

Random observation; but for anything related to corporate purchasing the more finicky you make it (within reason) the better it is liked. Middle managers are overjoyed to ring you up, ask for a costing, then ring again for an invoice and finally a third time to give you card details.

That's quite interesting. Most of the people visiting our site come from other marketing channels and are (at least looking at the heatmaps and a/b testing results) generally checking us out.

Have you got a link to one of your sites with the step signup process?

Our marketing channel is usually word of mouth; so "sign up" works quite well. It is essentially "email us but with tactile feedback". We are in the same sector - but the product/services are somewhat different (along the lines of "help help we have a serious problem save us yesterday") so the demographic is probably fairly different.

And traffic from the sites are relatively low compared to someone being given our phone #, so it might have skewed data.

Unfortunately I can't really share more than that publicly (employers choice, not mine). But feel free to email me if you want (address in profile).

Hi guys!

Wow - I'm glad so many of you emailed.

A lot of creative apps and sites.

I have replied to 5 and have 10 to go.

Keep 'em coming!

@yaggo;

What kind of pages? My personal site/consultant site?

> What kind of pages? My personal site/consultant site?

I don't know what yaggo was thinking, but I'd like to see simply some sites that you optimized for search engines - no matter whether those are your own sites or sites of your customers.

Hey Sebastian, great offer! I'd love if you'd take a look at Fridge to Food: http://www.fridgetofood.com

Keywords: recipe sharing, foodie community, ingredient search

Honestly, I could use help coming up with other keywords. I've been having trouble boiling down the concept into a few keywords. The best I can do is TasteSpotting meets StackOverflow (and eventually LocalHarvest).

Shoot me an e-mail at dbingham@fridgetofood.com. Thanks!

Woohoo a cakephp user! I'd like to use that again. That said, you should probably update your favicon :p

Working on it as we speak ;)

I think your site is great, but I'd like to share a frustration that I have with EVERY recipe site:

I can't find "connected" recipes that use common ingredients. Sure, there are sites where I can enter my ingredients and get recipes, but for a guy like me (single, 28, lives alone, professional job) I'd rather be told what to buy that will make N dishes.

In short, I want to buy the fewest ingredients (without having to research and crossreference) that will make a variety of delicious dishes.

Something like this may exist. If so, please point me towards it.

I have no idea if anything exists to do that. I've never found it if it does. I have no idea how to do that, either. But I'll certainly keep it in mind. Maybe once I've whittled down the todo list I'll come back to it and see if I can solve it.

Foodonthetable.com does exactly this.

This might be officially time for SearchYC.com to add an "Offer HN" section!

Please check out http://Videolla.com: Monetization for video, paid video. Video hosting for paid premium video content.

On videolla you can: host, stream, distribute, publish, rent, sell, subscribe, donate your videos.

Also let me know if you have any paid video tutorials on SEO that you are willing to sell(Its very hot topic!)

From a fellow swede. I've tried to follow SEO best practices on the startup I co-founded, http://www.klicktrack.com/ but certainly have things I can improve. I would greatly appreciate if you could have a look. We provide a turn-key download store for labels and artists.

Hello Sebastian, this is a timely offer! I've recently looked into SEO and applied what i believe are the 'basics' for on-page optimisation, ie keyword usage, titles, descriptions etc on my 2 sites http://dipeshparmar.com and http://dvpwebdesign.com. But i'm a bit lost with link building, reciprocal linking, and web marketing in general? SEO seems a really complex subject, which seemingly can take many months to implement, can you give me any advice? If so, you can email me at info@dvpwebdesign.com.

Hi. I appreciate the service you're providing to the community! I would also like to add that there are keyword suggestion tools such as google's (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) that might be worth checking out. What is your take on these tools? I assume it doesn't hurt to use them, but how helpful are the suggestions?

Sebastian - Thanks for generous offer. Just sent you an email.

These Offer HN strings have made HN like any other place on the web.

"These Offer HN strings have made HN unlike any other place on the web". There, fixed.

Thanks for catching that.

Heya,

Would love to hear your thoughts on the site I'm working on right now: http://www.snowboardfinder.com It's a finder and price comparison site for snowboard gear.

keywords: snowboards, snowboard gear, snowboard prices

i guess i need to come up with a bunch more keywords.

Anyways, any help would be absolutely appreciated :D

I have a special kind of problem with my website on rock climbing weather - the most important forecast pages do not have a lot of text other than the forecast. Advice would be appreciated! http://www.climbingweather.com

This is amazing - I sent you an email about www.Jobdeals.com (http://www.Jobdeals.com) if you have some time.

We're a local services marketplace .. because we cover such a wide market, I'm not sure which keywords we should be focusing on..

I have now replied to about 50 emails, and I've got about 30 more in my inbox.

I will answer them later this evening.

Url:http://tabtrick.com/

Keywords: Custom Facebook Page, Facebook Business Page, Facebook Fan Page, Facebook Template, Welcome Tab

Description of my site: I have Facebook Page creator that allows user to easily customize their Facebook Page.

Thanks for the offer Sebastian.. Here is my site:

https://www.erpnext.com

It is an affordable, online ERP solution for small and medium businesses into manufacturing, distribution, retail or services.

Keywords: erp, crm, saas, open source, smb

Any help would be welcome :-)

Sebastian, a great and timely offer, as I've just kicked off my startup at http://LabSlice.com. I've sent you an email and would love to hear your feedback!

http://suplify.me

We're building support software. As in a ticketing system which aggregates all support tickets from email(imap), twitter, facebook and others.

Wow. I need this and just contacted you. Thanks! Our site is at http://commerce.exorbyte.com and we need this type of help.

I don't currently have a website that I'd like to SEO, but I will in the future. Maybe those who get help would be willing to post the advice they receive, so that all of us benefit?

If you're interested in SEO and would like to learn, I recommend you start reading http://www.seomoz.org/blog

SEOMoz is a great SEO-company, and they have an incredibly useful blog. From novice to advance!

I second SEOMoz. First learned of them in Mixergy and I have found his blog to be a great resource.

Thanks for the offer. Will be emailing you. FYI - http://www.thebatchwatermarks.com

I would definitely like some link love. We're still working on our MVP so most of the on-site issues are up in the air. Sending an email now.

I got about 450 emails from you guys. I'm replying to each and every one of them. It's taking some time - but I'm doing my best!

Is my posterous blog with a custom domain (troysimpson.co) suffering from SEO problems from the redirect?

It actually isn't a redirect if you have it set up correctly. Did you configure your DNS to point to the Posterous server? If so, your domain should be directly bound to Posterous without a redirect.

thanks for the offer sebastian, I've followed some SEO best practices on my site http://www.gmbhnews.com/make-mobile-site/ , maybe you can take a look, I'll welcome any advice.

What's the first thing you look at when optimizing a site for SEO?

Thanks, fantastic offer - will be sending you an email shortly :-)

Thank you for your nice offer! Will drop you an email.

Thanks for the offer, I'll email you in a minute!

Sorry, the account was created two hours ago, don't have a personal site and any proof that has worked for IKEA or others.

PS: SEO must find the correct keywords for a site not the client...

I created this account 2 hours ago, yes - but your point is?

I read HN every day,I read the comments, and I understand the culture here.

I was thinking I could give something back to the community by answering some questions.

"SEO must find the correct keywords for a site not the client" - I don't quite understand what you meant by this, so please elaborate.

Proof and a personal site; I'm not here to promote my business and I'm not here to brag about my clients/past clients. I simply stated that I have worked with them, and whether or not you chose to believe me or not - your choice!

"I read HN every day,I read the comments, and I understand the culture here. I was thinking I could give something back to the community by answering some questions."

why don't aswer to questions on HN instead of use e-mail? isn't "community" to share with all SEO tips?

"SEO must find the correct keywords for a site not the client"

part of SEO job is to find the correct keywords for a site and optimize for those, no? but you say "I need: The URL of the website; some keywords"

In conclusion i'm work every day with SEO/SEM and in this sector the word "free" is used often for ulterior motives, hence my doubts...why a pro SEO should work for free?(work is time and time is money)...all here.

Have a nice day ;)

Some people want secrecy, and some don't.

Those who posted here, shall receive a reply here.

I don't have any motives behind this, except I want to help people out. Startups have very limited budgets, and maybe someone would like to hire me, and maybe I could end up having a good relationship with other entrepreneurs.

Networking first, money second.

I'm employed by a company who deals with printers, cartridges and paper, so I have some free time on my hands :)

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth I say. You can always choose not to take the advice given. And with SEO advice you can usually tell whether it will do harm if not whether it'll help.

Thanks SebastianSH, sent you an email!

Thanks for your offer!

email outbound! thanks for your time and effort.

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