Are you tasked with selling SEO to your CEO? Or, do you know that SEO is a really good option for your company’s marketing dollars but you need to get the c-suite on board with your SEO recommendation?
This blog is for you.
As someone who has sold or pitched SEO to countless CEOs and c-suite executives, I’ve learned a thing or two about talking the talk and walking the walk. Also, for what it’s worth, I’m a CEO too.
What Not to Say to CEOs When Selling them SEO
One thing I’ve learned about about talking to CEOs about SEO is that they have no desire to hear about how much you know about algorithms or how it all works. Don’t waste your time talking about link profiles, canonical URLs, alt tags, meta data, or any technical SEO.
CEOs care about numbers, costs and profits. Hit them here, and not by showing off your knowledge of technical SEO, and you will have their ear.
Put Yourself in Your CEOs Shows When Talking about SEO
CEOs are busy. You have to understand that (unless they ask) they really only want to know a data-driven answer as to why you think your company should invest its marketing dollars somewhere else. CEOs care about results. Give them an answer as to how they will get them and you may win them over.
You need to be able to communicate to them quickly and efficiently:
Communicate in terms of business goals.
Communicate in terms of risk.
Remember, that executives have bosses too.
Be aware of your company’s budgeting and planning.
Think like a boss – know the most you can about how SEO can help the company.
CEOs are decision-makers, not problem-solvers. They are going to ask:
Why should we invest in SEO vs. [insert another strategy here]?
What profits can you estimate?
How long is it going to take?
What are the KPIs?
How many widgets do we have to sell to justify the costs?
Can we do this in-house?
Point Out the Competition’s Strategy
I once had a CEO tell me he wanted to “suffocate the competition” in the business sense. Showing a CEO that their competitors are having success with SEO — and assigning a revenue estimate to it — can make them move faster than a fiddler attracts a square dance. Show them the actual search results for the keywords you’d like to rank for. Next, explain that the reason the competition is showing up on the first page, and you’re not, is because you don’t have SEO services.
Show Them Some Credible Stats that Back-up Your Results Claims
72% of marketers say content creation is the most effective SEO tactic (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
71% of B2B research starts with generic searches. (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
57% of B2B marketers agree that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. (Searchmetrics)
Better yet, if you have some tracking in place, maybe you have some solid metrics that showcase previous successes with organic search.
Example: We had a big real estate development client with a CEO who was known as a ball-buster. SEO was never really on the table — he was more on board with PPC — until his marketing team showed him data that proved CPA with SEO was cheaper, and more effective, than display. He changed his tune and they are still enjoying success from it today.
Put the Emphasis on ROI
Estimating ROI is challenging but if you are somewhat savvy you should be able to get some estimates on this. For example, say your budget is $1000. Your average order is $50. This means you have to sell at least 20 items to break even (not including overhead).
If you can show that you expect to sell 40 items after 4 months of SEO, and make $2000, and up to 100 items after 8 months ($5000), and more, then you will have a strong case for generating the budget and green light.
Setting Expectations with CEOs
With all things marketing, you have to set proper expectations. The last thing you want to do is say SEO will take a few months to ramp up when you know it will take 10. If you are pressured to get more immediate results, consider bringing PPC into the mix alongside SEO.
Ever wonder why you can’t rank first in Google for your brand’s name? This post will show you how.
As an SEO company that regularly helps clients build their brands, it’s been natural for us to get a few clients that want to rebrand under a different name. Naturally, they want to rank for Google searches for their new brand name, and sometimes this can require more effort than other times.
In fact, when Digital Elevator was started, the phrase “Digital Elevator” was associated with some LG (the TV-makers) ad that had some global reach. That meant that I had to do a bit more legwork to get my brand name to rank first for searches for the company.
But, as I would find out, and as I have come to find with others clients, my brand name was slightly generic and this brought out a very important consideration for how difficult it would be to rank number one:
My brand name was slightly generic and this brought out a very important consideration for how difficult it would be to rank number one:
That’s right, the context of your brand name has a lot to do with its difficulty ranking it first. For example, I once led an SEO campaign for a cosmetic dentistry website that featured a product called “Lumineers,” a type of dental veneer. At one point, we had the Lumineers page on our website ranking second, just under the brand’s website, until Google came along and made some context-related changes to the search engine results pages (SERPs).
As you may know, there is a band called “The Lumineers,” and these guys became very popular shortly after our dentistry website was created. Because Google figured that a search for “Lumineers” was more likely to be for the band than the dental product, the context of this search, at least in Google’s eyes, leaned more towards results for the band.
This remains true for this search to this day; Lumineers, the band, dominates the SERPs while the dental product only shows up once on the front page:
This is a perfect example of how context – for a brand trying to rank or for rankings generally – can present a challenge for ranking.
In the case of Digital Elevator, we were able to successfully rank number one for our brand as well as fill the first page of the SERPs with our social media profiles. This is the marking of a successful branding campaign. I’ll teach you how to do this below.
If your company is like Lumineers, the type of name that exists already and is associated with something else, the likelihood of you ranking first depends on a few things:
How popular your company is compared to the other product/service/person
The context of the phrase that comprises your brand name
How much SEO you are willing to do
Now, I don’t want to get your hopes up if you just named your company Coca-Cola Paint and want to have it rank for “Coca-Cola.” You’ll never do this, no matter how much money you spend on SEO.
If Google feels a phrase is contextually related to something specific, it will always want to deliver that result to searchers in an attempt to match their perceived intent.
If Google feels a phrase is contextually related to something specific, it will always want to deliver that result to searchers in an attempt to match their perceived intent.
However, if there is not some megabrand, band, or phrase dominating the space, you may have a shot.
How to Rank for Your Brand Name
Ok, so you’ve made the decision to rank for your brand name. Here’s how to give it the ol’ “college try.”
1. Get the exact match domain
In my case, I bought the domain name thedigitalelevator.com. According to Moz’s Search Engine Ranking Factors 2015, Domain-Level Keyword Usage, or having “exact-match keyword domains, partial-keyword matches, etc.” is the seventh most highly correlated ranking signal.
If this is already taken as a .com, you can always try to buy a different TLD: .tv, .co, .biz, etc. A dot com is always going to be your best bet, but in an effort to maintain branding consistency and play nice with ranking correlations, I’d advise this. Of course, you have to take a look at whether or not a brand that owns the dot com is ranking and if you want to compete with that.
2. Update all of Your Social Media Accounts
Slightly less tricky than getting the domain, but tricky nonetheless, getting all of your social media profiles to have your brand name in them is your next step.
Facebook
Facebook, being the nice guys that they are, will allow you to change your page name once, and only once. They will also allow you to change your business URL as well… but only once.
Obviously, with Facebook and all of your social media accounts, you want to change the name rather than create a new profile because you want to maintain your followers.
Twitter
Twitter has far less strict rules about name changes than Facebook, but this doesn’t always mean the @name you want will be available. If it is, you’re home free. If not, you have a couple of options:
Contact the person who is using the handle you want and negotiate (you’ll have a better chance of getting this if they don’t use it and if they don’t have any followers)
File a trademark issue with Twitter. You will, of course, have to prove all of this.
Instagram
Changing your name on Instagram is pretty easy as well. Here’s how.
If you refer to the above Moz graphic, you’ll see the most highly correlated ranking signal is Domain-Level Link Features. This would include link metrics such as the quantity of links, the trust of those links, domain-level PageRank of those links, etc.
Link building may be the single most important thing you do in your effort to rank for your brand, but you’ll still want to do the other items mentioned above.
Link building may be the single most important thing you do in your effort to rank for your brand
So, what is a brand-based link? For me, a link that used the anchor text “Digital Elevator” is what I’d be shooting for. If you were to take a look at my backlink profile and that of most brands, you’d see that most instances of links to our sites include the brand name as the link text. Ex. a link to the Yankees website would be Yankees.
If you wanted to increase the likelihood that you would rank for your brand name, building links with the anchor text of your brand name would be the most powerful way to do so.
If you don’t have the resources to build links (or simply don’t know how), you have another option. You could try to make changes to the instances of your brand around the web and see how that does. This assumes that your brand is preexisting though and has mentions on the web. To do this, you’d find all the sites on the internet that mention your brand but don’t link to it, and ask them to.
When you are building links for your website you got to be very precise on what you do. Every marketeer worth their salt knows what a backlink is. Building backlinks can quickly become a minefield of mistakes and mishaps for the uninformed SEO. Check out this step-by-step process on how to build backlinks the right way in 2018.
Rank for Your Brand Name: Next Steps
After reading this post you should have a good idea of whether or not the brand name you want to rank for will actually have a shot of ranking first on Google. If it is super-generic, your chances become much harder, but this doesn’t mean it is impossible.
Regardless, you should try and update your domain to have an exact match of your brand name or at least contain the main words. Secondly, update your social media profiles so that they are all consistent with your new brand name.
Finally, build links to your website using the exact words of your brand name. This will be the most powerful thing you can do but will also be the most time-consuming, depending on how competitive or contextually challenging that name is.
If you have any specific questions about how to do this, for help doing this, or to determine how viable this would be, feel free to reach out to me or comment below.
If you own a gym or some other type of fitness establishment (ex. CrossFit), there’s a good chance a bulk of your leads will come from your website. Thing is, you may not know how to optimize your gym’s website for SEO or how to get the most out of the traffic it currently generates.
As a whole, it seems there is continued interest in health and fitness as revealed by Google Trends data.
As the above information clearly shows an upward interest in gym-related search engines queries, you’ll want to do all you can to get a piece of the pie.
Keep the below information handy when building out your gym website or if you are a web development agency building out gym websites for your clients.
A good gym website includes these five must-have elements
You ever go to a website for the first time and feel like you’ve been there before? That feeling creates a sense of trust in a brand and you’ll want to try to establish that right off the bat with your gym website. Here are some standard items that should be on your site:
1. Address and contact info
Gyms are highly localized businesses meaning your target audience will only travel so far to get to you. According to a poll conducted by BrightLocal, clients will drive a shorter distance to local businesses that offer leisure pursuits. The gym, in this poll, was a business that merited a 12-minute drive time.
It goes without saying that people will want to know where your gym is before they sign up so make this information easy to find. I recommend embedding a Google Map of your business on a clearly identified contact page.
2. Photos of interior and amenities
If someone is going to spend their hard-earned money on a monthly commitment like a gym, they are going to want to know what it looks like inside. Invest in a professional photographer for this one and leave the dark, foggy, cell phone images for social media.
3. Your offerings and membership packages
Like a restaurant should showcase their menu, your gym should showcase the services or classes it offers. Each service should get its own dedicated page as to provide it the best opportunity to rank in the search engines. Learn more about that in this gym SEO case study.
The membership packages are also huge items your potential clients will be looking for. Take it a step further by mentioning the membership packages on the site, everything that is included in them, and provide clients the ability to checkout right online.
4. Testimonials
Nothing says your gym is awesome like recommendations from your existing clients. Get testimonials, reviews, and before and after transformations and put them on a dedicated page on your site as well as a few on the homepage.
5. Way to get a free pass
A great way to get leads is to offer a free pass. Some gyms offer a free pass for a few days, others offer a free month if the member signs up with a credit card. The latter approach may work best as it gets them in the system, allows for more time to get acclimated to the gym, and provides the whole satisfaction guarantee thingy (if you have one).
On-page Elements Set the Tone for Your Ability to Rank
Going along with number three above, some of the best things a gym website can have to attract more search engine traffic are some solid on-page elements.
If you want to try to rank a spinning class for your gym in Chicago for example, you’d be advised to do something like the following for your spinning class page:
Create a title tag like “Spinning Classes Chicago- [gym name]”
Create a H1 like “Spinning Classes Chicago”
Create a URL like “example.com/spinning-classes-chicago”
Add “spinning classes Chicago” within the content of that page
Add an image and make the ALT attributes have the words “spinning class Chicago” in them
Schema.org is a Search Engine’s Best Friend
Schema.org is a vocabulary that is used to help webmasters and developers communicate what their pages are about in a search engine-friendly way. Google, Bing and Yahoo all sponsor Schema.org and these schema’s, called structured data, are a great way to get more interest from search engines to your local site.
If you don’t have WordPress, the quickest way to get this HTML is Schema Creator.
Business Directory Listings/Citations are a Must for Local SEO
According to data from Moz, external website signals like citations (a fancy way of saying directory listings but a citation can also mean simply a mention of your business online) are one of the most important ranking factors.
The most important of these by far is Google My Business, a free listing that allows you to take ownership of the way your business appears online. The idea with citations is to claim as many as possible, starting with the ones that already rank on the first page for searches related to your gym.
For example, a Google search for “gym Chicago” currently reveals Yelp at the first two spots. That would be a great place to list your gym since that is likely a highly popular page. Other important directory listings include Facebook, data aggregators like LocalEze, gym-specific directories like FitLink, or region-specific directories like http://www.denver.com/places.
There are some great services that offer citation building for you such as BrightLocal and WhiteSpark. Digital Elevator offers citation building as part of our local SEO packages and you can always just do it yourself (check this blog for a nice list of citations).
There are no hard and fast rules to how many citations you should build but generally we build our local SEO clients anywhere from 40 to 100.
A Review Strategy is Great for Social Proof and SEO
To get reviews, send out emails to existing clients you know love you and provide them with the links to your directory listings so they can leave their five-star reviews. You can also create links to your directory pages on your site so they are visible and can be navigated to easily.
Link Building is Tough but a Major Ranking Factor
Links are probably one of the hardest things to do for a local business. They are also one of the most important; the aforementioned Moz study we linked to early puts link signals as the second most important ranking factor for local SEO.
When you’re building links it’s important to have in mind that this work is time-consuming and sometimes very hard. To ease your work you can use this tool – Linkio.com which can be a huge time saver and also will automate your process and give you the exact link building game plan for any target website.
Gyms are really mini communities so it always helps to try and showcase what your community is like through your website. Still, before you can do that you’ll have to actually get people to come to your website.
Take the above advice and implement it into your website to help your gym rank for all of the classes, services and amenities it offers. These same principles can be applied to small gyms or CrossFit-like establishments.
If you have any questions or other input, please feel free to reach out to me or leave a comment below.
We’ve all been there before. You logon to your favorite domain purchasing service only to find that the domain name you want is already taken. Head, meet wall.
Sometimes these domains are for sale and are simply “parked,” or other times you get contacted from a domain broker who realizes your business name may be similar to something he’s selling.
This always begs the question, how much is a domain name worth and how much should I offer/pay? This industry has always seemed liked the Wild West to me. Maybe we can end this once and for all?
Let’s address the costs and potential value of a domain name from an SEO perspective but also a marketing perspective (which is just really another way of saying SEO anyway).
Here’s What You Should Know about Choosing a Domain from a General Standpoint
Back in 2007, Moz, a SEO software company, published a post on the rules for choosing the right domain name (by Rand Fishkin). These rules still apply and will somewhat set the tone for the rest of this post.
I have condensed them here:
1. Brainstorm 5 Top Keywords
It can be good practice to have a domain that includes the keywords you’re trying to rank for. So, for example, if you are in the fitness business, something with “fitness, health, exercise, nutrition” could be a good part of the domain.
2. Make the Domain Unique
You don’t want to get in the situation where you can confuse your domain name with that of another brand. The example Rand uses is Flickr.com and an existing site that, at the time of his post, was not owned by Flickr – Flicker.com. It seems that Flickr heeded his advice and has since purchased Flicker.com which now 301 redirects back to the main site. Look out for situations like these or those that have plural, hyphenated or misspelled versions and, where possible, avoid these domains.
3. Choose a Dot-com
People still assume that websites end in .com so you should always seek to buy a domain with this TLD. While you can have a site that is .net or .org, you’ll still want to own the .com as well to take control of all the branded properties.
4. Make it Easy to Type
If you have to break down how to spell the domain when you’re talking to potential customers you’ve probably selected a bad one.
5. Make it Easy to Remember
This goes along with the above; make your domain easy to remember so that people can easily type it in from memory later on. Think how easy Amazon.com is to remember and spell.
6. Keep it as Short as Possible
In an effort to push a lot of keywords into domain names, a lot of people have purchased really long domain names. Long domains often break the above two rules.
7. Create and Fulfill Expectations
If possible, buy a domain that is associated with a word that accurately describes what you do. Amazon.com is an example of domain that doesn’t, WebMD.com is an example of a domain that does.
8. Avoid Copyright Infringement
Before buying a domain make sure to visit Copyright.gov to ensure you are not violating any copyright laws.
9. Set Yourself Apart with a Brand
A lot of times companies will buy a domain rich in keywords but that has nothing to do with their actual brand name. It is recommended that your domain also be your brand name, if possible.
10. Avoid Hyphens and Numbers
Hyphens are amateur-hour in domain names and should be avoided as much as possible. Numbers make it hard for people to know if it is the spelled out number or the numerical one.
11. Don’t Follow the Latest Trends
A lot of recent trends in domain names have been shifting to things like .co or purposeful misspellings. This is especially true in startup communities. Just because others are doing it doesn’t mean you should too.
12. Use an Ajax Domain Selection Tool
I’ve heard stories from people where they say they’d use a domain name search tool from a company that sells domains, didn’t buy it, then when they went back the price had either increased or was suddenly sold and was for sale for a ridiculous amount. Remember that you can search for domain names without doing it through a service with sites like Domjax.
The Value of a Domain from a Marketing Perspective
Ok, now that we have identified some points to consider for choosing a domain we can also use this information to determine what the value is of a domain name that is already registered by someone else who wants to sell it to you from a marketing perspective.
Taking points 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9 from above, pure marketing savvy would tell you that the first indicators of a site even being worth your consideration for purchase are:
It’s a dot-com
It’s easy to spell
It’s easy to remember
It’s short and sweet
It’s your brand name
Adding one more to this list that may or not be obvious is the following:
One-word domain names
Note: While all these points need not be met to justify a purchase, the more the better.
General Value of Dot-com’s
As mentioned above, if you get your hands on a good domain name and it’s a dot-com, you can expect to pay more. If you already own the dot-com and just want to get a hold of all the other TLDs to protect your brand (.net, .co, .biz, etc.), then that would be a good way to protect your brand name.
General Value of Domain’s that are Easy to Spell
A domain that is easy to spell means that you can say it and people will be able to find it without having to go through the process of going through half the phonetic alphabet each time you try to direct someone to your site. The more basic a word is as a domain, the more value it will likely have. This is especially true for easy-to-spell words that are four to six characters (ex. art.com or Amazon.com).
General Value of Memorable Domain Names
Domain’s that are really easy to remember will merit more value. Amazon.com is the easiest domain to remember that I can think of because it rhymes (this may or may not be influenced by the subconscious brand power this domain affords). If you are seeking to buy a domain that is really memorable expect to pay more for it than a domain that is weird, like Abstentious.com or something (hey, it’s available!).
General Value of Short Domains
If your domain name is short, this makes it more valuable as it is extremely rare to find a domain that is short and that is actually a correctly-spelled word. A short domain doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a one-word domain either, LendingTree.com is a fairly short domain – under 12 characters – and is two words.
General Value of a Domain that is Your Brand Name
If you find yourself in a position where someone owns the .com of your brand name, you’re in a pretty tough spot to negotiate and you likely didn’t do enough preliminary research before choosing your brand name.
That’s the harsh truth but should be understood if you are entering a negotiating position. Still, it doesn’t mean that you’ll end up spending a bunch on a domain name because someone else owns the brand name that you went with.
For example, a client of mine who owns a flight charter company (and who I’ve had this conversation with before regarding the value of domain names), had a brand name of “Great Flight.” Unfortunately, this domain, GreatFlight.com, was not available at that time so he settled for “GreatFlt.com.”
GreatFlt.com didn’t meet a lot of my general marketing criteria for a domain name:
It wasn’t easy to spell
It wasn’t easy to remember
It wasn’t technically his brand name
The client asked that I help him decide what the domain GreatFlight.com was worth as he knew it was important to his branding (even though he’d already bought a bunch of shirts with “GreatFlt.com” on them!). Taking the general marketing considerations in mind but also the SEO value of a domain is important, and you’ll learn more about that below.
The story actually ended pretty well as we found that the owner was willing to negotiate. The site had no SEO value and other than being a fairly generic and easy to spell and remember domain, really had no other inherent value. I think the original owner was asking $1,500 for this particular domain but my client ended up getting off him for like $300 or something that did not break the bank. Winning!
General Value of One-Word Domain Names
Back to the general marketing criteria after a nice little story of someone who didn’t get ripped off.
If you can find a one-word domain name that meets most of the above 12 criteria you can probably expect to pay an arm and a leg for it. It’s not that one-word domain names automatically rank in the search engines or anything like that, it’s just that from a marketing and branding point of view they make a lot of sense. I guess you could say they have a lot of practical value, especially if they are short, easy to spell and easy to remember.
But at the end of the day, it’s the SEO value of a domain name that would make me suggest to a client to get their checkbook out. If you can combine the above general marketing valuation factors with the proceeding SEO values, you’re on to something big.
The Value of a Domain from an SEO Perspective
If you have a terrible domain name that gets 100,000 visits to the associated website each month a lot of the above can be thrown out. At the end of the day Google ranks individual pages, not sites based on their domain name (although this is a correlation factor).
Let’s take another one of my clients and a current domain purchasing opportunity that has recently come his way to help you understand how an SEO would go about valuating a domain from a search engine perspective. My client’s site is FitnessMentors.com and he was recently approached with the potential sale of domain FitnessMentor.com (no plural). Where possible, I’ll look at the purchase of this site in SEO terms based on the advice I gave my client with the examples below.
These are not necessarily listed in order of most importance although they can be loosely interpreted in order of value.
Keywords in Domains and Rankings as Interpreted for Value
According to a recent study conducted by Moz on search engine ranking factors domain-level keyword usage has an influence of about five out of 10 (with 10 being highly influential). The below graph also outlines some correlations between keyword usage within the domains:
As you can see, the correlation between a search and an exact match domain name is fairly high. If you are going to buy a domain that is an exact match keyword of a keyword that you’d like to rank for (ex. custom widgets/customwidgets.com) then that definitely sets the value at a high place.
Partial matches of a keyword in a domain name (ex. search for blue widgets and your domain is customwidgets.com) then that also is something that works in your favor and increases the value of that domain. Keep in mind that just because a domain has some or all of the keywords you are going after in it doesn’t necessarily mean it will rank, but rather it is likely that whoever owns or owned that domain probably dedicated a lot of their content to ranking for those keywords which would lend itself to algorithmic bias.
In the case of my client FitnessMentors.com and the potential purchase of site FitnessMentor.com, the above benefits of purchasing a domain with exact or partial match keywords doesn’t really apply. He is not actively trying to rank for “Fitness Mentor” (he already ranks #1 for this), the intent of someone searching for “Fitness Mentor” is not consistent with his site’s offerings (he sells educational materials to personal trainers), and furthermore there aren’t a lot of monthly searches (70) for this term according to Google Keyword Planner data anyway:
We are getting a little ahead of ourselves here with the above keyword search volume data but the point is that other than from a general marketing standpoint, the name does not lend itself to the keywords in domain factor we mentioned above. But, since I mentioned it, let’s look at that as a factor.
Domain Keyword Monthly Search Volume
If the domain you are looking at buying does in fact have keywords –exact match or partial – you are trying to rank for, it makes sense to determine the search volume of these keywords to see how much potential value they have.
Simply go to Google Keyword Planner, sign in (you’ll need a free Gmail account), and do the following:
Under “Find new keywords” select “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category”:
You should see the following area where you’ll put in your keywords into the “Your product or service section” (we put in “Fitness Mentor” in this example). Then click “Get ideas”:
Next, select the tab for “Keyword ideas” to see the search volume for the particular keyword:
This information will show you the average number of times people have searched for that exact keyword, the competition based on a simple criteria of Low, Medium or High, as well as the suggested bid. If you’re not familiar with Google AdWords, the suggested bid amount may confuse you. These numbers could get pretty high, just check out this search for “defense attorney” and how much higher the suggested bid amount is than it is for “fitness mentor”:
The takeaway is that the higher the search volume, the more competition and the higher the suggested bid, the more valuable the domain if it does in fact contain these exact words or most of them.
PageRank as a Domain Valuation Factor
Another thing I look at when determining the value of a preexisting domain is the PageRank. The higher a site’s PageRank, the more likely it is to appear at the top of Google search results. PageRank, a Google construct, works by counting the number and quality of links to a page and is indicated by a 0 through 10, with 10 being the most powerful. Google used to have a tool in Chrome where you could check this but have since disabled it. Just do a quick search for “PageRank plugin” and you’ll find something that helps you determine this number.
Not that you should hold me to this, but you could very easily apply another $1,000 for each numerical PageRank above one. For example, the site “FitnessMentor.com” that is for sale has a PageRank of two and my client’s site, as it is new, has a PageRank of zero. If we decide to buy it and do a 301 redirect of the site to my client’s, we would be confident that we would get a large portion, 90 to 99 percent, of the ranking power of that site, meaning we could likely jump to a PageRank 2 quickly based on the strength of the existing domain.
Before you go all crazy buying up domains and 301 redirecting them you should learn more about that process and involve an SEO and development team who is familiar with the process. Not to get too far off topic, but in many instances you want to do 301 redirects page by page rather than just the entire domain as individual pages/URLs (ex. customwidgets.com/blue) can have value too.
PageRank may be dead, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. Google has said that they wouldn’t be making any updates to the PageRank algorithm so it may not be the most accurate thing around to determine the authority of a domain or page. This leads us into a nice little segue of other tools that are updated regularly that were built to emulate Google’s PageRank.
Domain Authority as a Domain Valuation Factor
Domain Authority is a lot like PageRank in that it is a calculated metric for how well a domain is likely to rank in the search engines. It was developed by Moz and is based on a scale from 1 to 100 (with 100 being highest), and is in fact, maintained regularly unlike Google’s PageRank.
Link profile: a number of varying factors related to types of links on and point to a site
A site with low Domain Authority is in that 1 to 20 range, moderate Domain Authority in the 20 to 40 range, and pretty high Domain Authority in the 40+ range. This is not factual data, just the opinion of an SEO and my experience with websites.
In the case of my client’s prospective purchase, the site FitnessMentor.com has a Domain Authority of 27, which isn’t amazing, but it is not too bad either. Comparing it to the PageRank of two, this seems about right and you’ll find that they’re tends to be some correlation there as in, if one’s high, the other tends to be high too.
The above PageRank and Domain Authority metrics do take into account the backlink profile. While you could by all accounts take the marketing value, the PageRank and Domain Authority and make an estimate to how much a domain is worth this might not be where you want to stop your search.
The reason I say this is for the exact same issue we are going through upon trying to evaluate the FitnessMentor.com website. Before I dig in you’ll need to know that you’ll need to have some SEO software to do a backlink profile analysis. You can use something like Moz’s Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs to see what kind of links are pointing to the domain you are consider purchasing.
Some of the most important link metrics you’ll want to look at are:
Number of Root Domains linking to thedomain: in general, more is better.
Total number of links: in general, more is better although if the ratio of referring Root Domains to the total number of links is low, it could signal a warning.
The anchor text of the links: anchor text is highly correlated with high-rankings and an inspection of this could reveal a lot.
The authority of the links: determining if the links that point to the site that you want to buy are from other high-quality, authoritative websites or spammy, low-quality sites.
When I analyzed the PageRank 2, Domain Authority 27 site of FitnessMentor.com for a potential purchase, my first impression was that this would be a good buy for my client if he could get it in that $1,000+/- price range. Then I looked at the backlink profile and scratched my head a bit.
What I found was that the site only had about 20 referring domains linking to it, which is by no means amazing (I build some of my clients more than 20 links a month). Then I looked at the number of total links which was over 22,300. This was a WTF moment. This means that there are a bunch of sites that probably have a link to this site either in their footer or on the sidebar of their site. In other words, they link to this domain on every page of their site which can be a red flag as a lot of sites that do that sort of thing are spammy or it could just mean that they are owned by the same person.
In the case of FitnessMentor.com, it appeared to be the latter; another one of their web properties or partner sites was linking to it in the footer. This is not a deal breaker, it just means that the total amount of links is not representative of the popularity of that domain as the amount of referring links to the domain would be.
When I looked at the anchor text of the links pointing to the site I found that most of them were just names of the developer of the site who commented on a lot of blog sites. These links were all useless from an anchor text perspective and are borderline damaging to the quality of the link profile. I even found one piece of anchor text to the site that was, no joke, “bent over the car free video chat slight bend nude and porn pictures.” This is not good.
Finally, the authority of the sites that linked to this site was low with the exception of one link from eHow that was unfortunately nofollow.
In all, the backlink profile sucked and had some serious red flags as I was not going to let some site that had a decent little PageRank and Domain Authority score ruin my client’s site because it had been penalized for having a shitty backlink profile. I told the client that I wanted to get access to the other guys Webmaster Tools before making a decision and to see if there were any violations of Google Webmaster Guidelines as noted in the Manual Actions section of the site’s Web Master Tools.
At the time of this writing I don’t yet have access to this. I told my client that if I he wants to buy the site there may be a fair amount of link cleanup to do, costing him more in SEO because “homie don’t play that.”
Existing Website Content as a Domain Valuation Factor
This is an important consideration for value that is often overlooked. It is also one of those things that when a domain is purchased, the new owner destroys a lot of the SEO value because they don’t take the time to determine the value of all of the pages (URLs) on the site.
For example, let’s take the FitnessMentor.com website for example. What we are really looking at here is an entire website, not just a domain. This may or may not be the case in your situation but if you are looking at buying a domain and the existing website, you’ll want to pay close attention.
Upon investigation of the site, I found some blogs and pages that I feel are of decent value and could potentially rank in the search engines or could be used as foundations to build better content off of. Not to go crazy here, but the idea would be to grab that content, put it on my client’s existing site, then 301 redirect those old, individual pages to the newly created pages on my client’s site.
Rather than grabbing a domain and saying let’s point A to B, you are going through it and finding the content that may be valuable to your end-users and determining if it is worth saving.
If you find that a domain you want to purchase has a lot of good, useful content that can be used on your existing site, it has more value to you. The owner of the other site doesn’t need to know this, but you will need to have your development team involved to perform the 301 redirects accordingly.
Other Associated Web Properties as a Domain Valuation Factor
Where there’s one there’s usually another. Website owners tend to have more than one property and often have taken their chances at multiple ventures. Before you pull the trigger on the purchase of a domain, make sure to ask the current owner if they have any other associated domains or web properties that are connected to it.
This also includes but is not limited to social media accounts, blogs (ex. blog.customwidget.com) or other digital properties that may have some value. If, for example, you find that the potential domain also a Facebook and Twitter following of 100,000 relevant people, maybe they can agree to give you ownership of those accounts as well.
Domain Age as a Domain Valuation Factor
Another thing that is of very small consideration but worth mentioning is domain age, something that Google has said is not super important but is relevant. You can usually find the age of a domain and how long the owner has owned it by using a service like Whois.net.
Perhaps more important, from an offering point of view, is determining how long someone has owned the domain. If you use the Whois.net service you’ll find a “Creation Date” and that will let you know how long someone has potentially owned a domain (barring the fact that they may also have purchased from someone else).
Still, if you find a domain that has been owned for 10 years and figure that most non-premium domains are about $10 a year to maintain, you can assume, all other factors mentioned above aside, that the owner will want to get his $100 back. This is on you whether you think they deserve it or not.
Domain Name Calculators. Are They Accurate?
Personally, I don’t think software can be quite as subjective as a human when determining the value of a domain name. While some objective analysis is important, a lot of the characteristics of a domain name’s value should be examined relative to your business and its goals.
For starters, a domain name calculator is going to provide very little SEO background into what a site is worth or what it ranks for. Some of the criteria one domain name calculator used to determine the value of a domain included PageRank, the number of pages in Google’s index, its social media visibility, the number of backlinks as well as the estimated traffic.
While these are important metrics, I found that they were completely inaccurate compared to the analysis I performed with my many SEO software tools. In fact, one of these domain calculator sites (whose name I’ll leave out) placed the value of the FitnessMentor.com site at over $7,000!
Keep in mind that this site only has a PageRank of 2, very few pages that are actually non-product specific (which would not be valuable to anyone else), no social visibility (according to their analysis), no backlinks (according to their analysis), and five daily visitors (according to their analysis). I’m not sure where they put all their weight but this site is clearly not worth over $7,000.
Maybe sites like these are why domain name sellers tend to be completely on a different planet when it comes to determining what their sites are actually worth.
Negotiating the Price of a Domain Name
If you do decide that you want to buy a domain name from a private owner or a brokerage, expect the typical “make me an offer” response. For some reason these people always want you to make the first move and for some reason they always seem to be insulted when you procure your bid.
Just make sure you try to understand how they valuate their domain and hope that they don’t say with a domain calculator site. If you know a little about what they are using to justify their cost, you can break that info down and likely prove them wrong (without insulting them).
Now that you have read this post and know how to value a website properly, you can come at them with an army of facts that justify your bid. Just because someone is an ass for buying a domain that has no inherent value doesn’t mean you are too.
However, if you find a domain that checks off a lot of general marketing valuation criteria as well as the SEO valuation criteria you may be prepared for a battle. Whenever possible, make it known that you know a lot about what really makes a domain valuable without letting them know how many of those things their domain has.
For example, if the domain has a high PageRank and Domain Authority but has a poor link profile, don’t tell them about the good things. Let them know that you’ll have to spend hours and $100s cleaning up the bad links they built and that greatly devalues their site. You’d probably be better off picking apart the general marketing valuation items where possible as many domain owners aren’t going to know what they hell you’re talking about when you tell them that the ratio of referring domains to total links makes the site less valuable anyway.
What are your experiences with trying to buy domains? I’m sure there are some good horror stories as well as success stories. Did I miss anything that you’d consider when buying a domain or that needs to be thrown into the mix?
One well-known method of getting links is through the HARO platform that connects reporters with expert news sources. If you are an expert in any particular industry you can greatly benefit from HARO (short for Help a Reporter Out) if you are featured in their stories, some of which are on major media outlets like The NY Times, Huffington Post and Entreprenuer.com.
As you are probably already aware, getting featured on huge media publications does wonders for your exposure but the reference to your website in link form is also a huge win in terms of SEO.
Today I’m going to talk about how I’ve successfully managed to bat at about 50 percent in terms of getting links from HARO reporters. In other words, I have figured out a nice little method that sees that for about half the time I respond to stories I do in fact earn the media exposure and that thing I’m really after, a backlink from a high PageRank site.
And guess what? I’m going to share all of my tips and secrets with you today so you can do the same thing for your website.
Getting Started with HARO
This post is not going to be about how to setup an account with HARO – any monkey with an internet connection knows how to do that. I am talking about how I bat 50 percent with a free account as HARO does offer premium accounts that start at $19 a month.
I’ve never actually tried a premium account but the major differences are that you get to build a profile on the HARO website in which reporters can find you and you get to search their database anytime rather than wait for one of the three-a-day emails they send out with a free account.
I’ve got nothing against the premium accounts and in fact I think they would be a great value for someone who wants to dedicate a lot of time to getting featured. But I’ve had some good success with the free platform (and I pay for plenty of other SEO-type software) so this post is all about free!
Should you want to learn a bit more about the premium accounts and using HARO that way, Quicksprout University has a nice little video by Brian Dean that covers some of the ins and outs of using the platform from his perspective.
In case you’re wondering if HARO links are on the radar of Google’s Penguin algorithm the same way they are for gamey press release or low quality links, here’s a post by Search Engine Land titled “Actually, we don’t think Google Hates HARO links” that should rest that case for you.
So, now that we have gone through the assumption that you have done the following:
Setup a HARO account
Setup your preferences based on your (or your clients) expertise
Are getting HARO emails
We can move on to my secrets for getting more links from HARO.
Tip #1: Open HARO Emails Quickly to be the First to Respond
If you are truly on the prowl to get media exposure and links from HARO reporters you have to be diligent about the process.
This means anticipating that each email you get from HARO will present a link building opportunity for you should you capitalize on it. That said, once you get your HARO email, open it quickly and peruse the topics to see if there are any that stand out.
What I would not recommend is flagging the email and getting back to it later. Timeliness is something that is very important to reporters. Keep in mind that they are pressed for time and want to get their story compiled and sent over to their editors as quickly as possible.
Without mentioning the obvious component of every story, the deadline, just because a reporter says their deadline is in three days doesn’t mean you can take your time and submit your story in two days. You’ll be doing so after they have already received dozens, if not 100s, of other submissions that might be worthwhile.
Continuing on the timeliness factor, once you have decided that a topic that comes across the HARO email is appealing it is time for you to stop everything you are doing and get to responding.
Even if you are the most qualified person who responds and provides the most detailed, well-written response, if you respond late there’s a good chance your email won’t even be looked at because the story has already been formulated.
As soon as you get that email, get to writing and try to submit your response as soon as possible.
Tip #3: Drafting Your Email Response to Improve Chances of Earning a Link
Your email response is where you will really be able to shine. Remember that you have to click the email link to respond to the reporter.
What this means is that the reporter does not know who the hell you are and might not necessarily know why you are emailing them. This is why it is important to give them a clue as to what story you are responding to as this story may not be the only one they have on HARO.
Below is an exact email response I drafted for a PR 4 link that I earned. Take note of the following:
Title– I titled the email response “HARO: How Do You Write Your First Paragraph” because that was the title of the summary listed on the HARO email. If I used the above summary I would have titled the email “HARO: How to road trip with a baby.”
Personalization– You’ll notice I start my email with “Hi Amanda” before diving directly into my response. Sometimes the reporter won’t list their name but when they do I always call them by their name. Sometimes I even thank them for their thoughtful consideration to set a nice, polite tone.
About You– Generally the reporters will be very specific about what they want to include about you in their story. Sometimes they ask for a brief bio (in this case they did not) as well as social media links (in this case they did not). This reporter only asked me to provide my name, title and a link to my website. Still, I provide additional contact info in my email signature like my phone number (I should probably have some social links there too) in the event they want to call me or follow up in some way that they did not mention outright.
When possible, look at other stories your reporter has written (by searching for them on their media outlet) to check their format style. This helps you two ways: one is that it allows you to cater your writing style in a way that meets their approach. Two is that it will give you an idea if you will be featured in isolation or if you will simply be quoted with your expert opinion along with multiple others (most likely).
Tip #4: Write Your Response in MS Word First and Follow These Writing Rules
One of the biggest mistakes you can make with a reporter is sending them something that is littered with grammar errors. This is why I always, always, always write my response in MS Word first so that it spell and grammar checks everything. My Outlook email does this too but not in the same capacity as Word.
After I write the response in Word, I paste it directly into the email (more on attachments below).
It goes without saying that I proofread the crap out of these – 3 to 4 times – before sending them off. If you have a colleague/wife/spouse/seeing eye dog nearby have them read it too and check for edits.
When responding, write in a way that the reporter can cut and paste your content directly into their article. They don’t want to spend their time editing your content (and I don’t mean grammar) so if you place it in a way that they can simply quote you and give attribution you are more likely to get featured.
Tip #5: Consider the Media Outlet to See if the Work Required is Worth Your Time
After I look at topics that I think I want to respond to I also look at the media outlet that is inquiring. Sometimes the reporter won’t place the media outlet in the summary and a lot of times I won’t respond to these queries unless the topic is really appealing and the Query gives some hints that it is actually a pretty big news outlet.
When the media outlet is mentioned, I do a couple of things. The first one is I visit the website (by Googling the name first and finding the .com) and checking its PageRank and trustworthiness (trustworthiness is something that you’ll know just by looking at a website). If the site is less than a PR2 I decide if there is a possibility that the site could become popular or if it has a decent size social media following.
Although my primary goal with HARO is to get links, you can’t forget about the value of exposure even if the site has a low PR.
Thirdly, I look to see if the links on their site are follow or no follow. If you know anything about SEO, you know you want a follow link.
That said, before you invest your time in writing an article and stopping everything you were doing, you have to decide the following:
Is the link worth it?
Is the exposure worth it?
Is the link follow?
If none of these answers is yes, don’t waste your time. If the link is no follow but comes from a huge news source, it will probably be worth your time.
Tip #6: Reading and Responding to the Question to Make Sure it’s Worth Your Time
It is imperative that you have a full grasp on both the Summary and the Query. Sometimes a Summary will look really enticing coupled with the media outlet but when you read the actual Query – the real meat and potatoes of the reporter’s goal – you’ll find that you don’t want to answer the question or are not suited to.
Sometimes reporters will specify who they want an answer from – be it geographical location, profession, gender or some other limiting factor – and if you don’t fit this bill don’t waste your time responding.
Also, sometimes the Query will differ slightly from what the Summary covers. Point is, read both very carefully and craft your answer in such a way that addresses exactly what they are looking for.
Tip #7: Response Length Should be Around 3 to 4 sentences
Before I started having a lot of luck with HARO links I’d write really long responses. Props to Bryan Conklin from Zylo for bringing my attention to this one.
What I’ve found is that most reporters just want a 2-3 sentence paragraph from you and not a full on blog post.
I think the best rule of thumb is to try to compress your answer to 2-4 sentences and if the reporter wants more leave it up to them to follow up with you.
If you feel that a more substantial piece is needed the benefit is that if it doesn’t get picked up you have yourself a nice blog post or at least the start of one.
If a reporter doesn’t specify response length look for hints in their previous work or stick with the 2-4 sentence rule of thumb as to not waste half your day writing something that may or may not get picked up.
Tip #8: Don’t Haggle the Reporters to See if They Like Your Submission
Once you send off your finely-tuned email don’t go all nuts trying to get in touch with the reporter to see if you are going to get featured.
For one, the HARO-masked emails won’t work after a certain period of time and if you go all stalker status finding a reporter (they are not that hard to find if they provide their names) don’t haggle them on Twitter.
If they like your response they’ll use it. Don’t be offended if you don’t get any sort of response; these guys and gals are busy, taking things personal won’t help anyone.
Tip #9: How Reporters Will Typically Respond if at All
In my experience most reporters won’t ever respond to you at all. There will be no “thank you for your submission” email or “we’ll be in touch” Tweet. You’re at their mercy and if you don’t like it don’t use the HARO platform!
If you are not selected it’s because you suck at writing and are but a pawn in your industry. Just kidding! It’s just that reporters don’t respond to tell you that you didn’t make the cut. That’d be an awkward conversation anyway.
If you are selected, here’s what I have usually found to be true based on medium:
Phone call– you are an industry ninja and you deserve a plaque. This probably also means that the article that is being written requires more details and specifics from those that are featured.
Email– your reporter probably just needs a little bit more info. I hardly ever get emails with the links to the finished articles I am featured in although I wish I would.
Social media– most likely Twitter because they can alert multiple contributors at once. They usually just @mention 2-3 people at once and then give a link to the site.
Skype– your reporter is either overseas, needs some sort of visual of you, or can’t get enough of your good-looking profile picture and needs to have their day made by seeing you in-person.
Live in person– if you are in the same town as your reporter every so often they might want to meet for coffee. Buy them a cup and keep in touch with them!
Things that I Think Work to My Advantage in Getting Selected
I probably should have started this post by saying I am no Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel or Brian Dean SEO ninja. I am, however, somewhat known in the industry and my name pops up from time-to-time (sometimes in ways that don’t hurt my feelings).
Here are some reasons why I think I’ve had some pretty decent success with HARO:
Big Twitter following: While not huge, my 3,600+ followers dwarfs the 200 follower Twitter average. Many reporters don’t even have this many followers so it sort of looks like I’m an authority on something.
Nice website: I keep the Digital Elevator website up-to-date and modern as well as try to post blogs regularly. This lends to my expertise in both content marketing and SEO.
Polite & Professional: You want to appear as polite and professional when speaking to reporters. If you are neither you don’t stand a chance.
I am truly an expert in the topics I respond to: Although I hate to call myself an “expert” at anything, I am very experienced with managing SEO and content marketing strategies and these are predominantly the types of topics I respond to.
Getting HARO Links Recap
By no means is getting HARO links consistently an easy thing and anyone who approaches it should look at it as a numbers game. The more inquiries you respond to the more of a chance you’ll have of getting links. If you can get three links from high quality sources a month then you’ll be getting some decent press and perhaps more attention from potential clients.
Hopefully you learned some good takeaways from the above and you too are on your way to batting 50 percent. Your homework is to implement the above into your next HARO response and to see if you have better luck getting links.
If you have any questions shoot me an email or Tweet and let me know how these strategies worked for you.
Instead of paying developers to do 301 redirects for you take the easy and inexpensive way out and do it yourself. There is no need to get all crazy with coding when cPanel makes 301 redirects easy enough for someone with even the most basic of programming skills. This method also works for 301 redirects for Joomla and 301 redirects for WordPress as they are both likely hosted in a cPanel account.
Note: This How To is for 301 redirects for websites that are hosted on servers running Apache
The Easy 301 Redirect in cPanel
There are two fairly simple ways to do a 301 redirect in cPanel. Below we will demonstrate the easiest way. In this How To, I will be 301 redirecting an old domain of mine (writingseocontent.com- which I have since let lapse) to my new domain (http://www.thedigitalelevator.com/). You can do a 301 redirect from a domain to a completely new domain or do a 301 redirect within the domain. For example http://www.thedigitalelevator.com/home to thedigitalelevator.com. In this situation, I am redirecting writingseocontent.com to thedigitalelevator.com because I merged the two companies and want to brand and market them as one. Additionally, I want the SEO value of that old website writingseocontent.com to transfer to my new website.
