Searchfest Presentation: Rebecca Kelley (SEOmoz Search Marketing Consultant)

Now a search marketing consultant for SEOmoz, Rebecca has spent the last year building a presence in the SEO blogosphere and conference circuit. Although she is still constantly learning new SEO techniques, she has quickly become well-versed in link building, keyword research, generating link bait, and performing site reviews. Rebecca believes that anyone with a desire and passion to learn can grasp SEO and pick up on it quickly.

Why links? Links are editorial votes for your site, more difficult to obtain than other factors. Links pointing to pages on the site will count as a vote for the entire domain. Links can drive traffic. Search engines can see lots of information about the links on your site – where it’s pointing, location on page, anchor text, relationships between domains, age of link & trends over time.

Different ways of link-building – attract links naturally, manual link-building campaign, purchase links, viral marketing (create linkbait) & social media marketing (create social media profiles). Best practices include proper anchor text in links; double check that page linking to you is spiderable; check to see that links are followed. Don’t give up trying to obtain links, study who is linking to competitors; track links, focus on links that last.

Determine value of link – is site linking to you trustworthy (e.g. .gov, .edu, news portals), is linking site relevant? Where does page linking to you rank in Google for its own title tag & competitive keywords. Use SEOmoz page strength tool.

Pitfalls to avoid: Forgetting to 301 your pages when changing / moving site; splitting sites into multiple domains; cheap links / site submission guarantees.

Rebecca’s Pre-Searchfest Thoughts (posted on SEOmoz blog)