John Doherty's Blog

10 May

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 31 comments

Shut Up About Yourself

Have you ever noticed how a lot of companies pay lip service to wanting to become a “thought leader” in their industry, and lead through great content, yet when they start writing all that comes out is self-promotional drivel that, let’s be honest, no one wants to read? I have.

Most businesses, in my opinion, don’t understand the difference between old-school “marketing material” and the new school of online marketing – thought leadership materials and other remarkable pieces. This has led me to one conclusion:

Everyone wants a brand experience. No one wants a marketing experience.

08 May

John Doherty Posted in Search Engine Optimization 9 comments

SEO for Photographers

Being both a travel photographer and an SEO Consultant, I have taken a keen interest in how images get found online. I don’t have enough time to dedicate to my photography site, but I’ve learned a thing or two about SEO for photography along the way to becoming an SEO professional.

Because of this I was happy when Feuza Reis, a New Jersey wedding photographer, asked to interview me for a video blog that she has been doing on her site. I agreed and so we had a great 30 minute chat about SEO and photography. Have a listen and I’d love to have your feedback!
Read more about SEO for Photographers …

03 May

John Doherty Posted in Uncategorized 17 comments

Tools for Creating Editorial Calendars

We’re all realizing the value of content and content marketing when it comes to SEO and earning rankings, especially with all the algorithm updates from the past year and the recent Penguin update as well. Content is more important than ever, and even the most skeptical are coming around to see that the time for content marketing is now.

All of that is well and good, but it does us no good if we don’t know how to create an editorial calendar for content creation. So let’s examine some tools that can help us do that. Just like a lot of processes that we think “Man, I wish I had a tool for that”, sometimes you need to try a few to figure out which one works best for you. These should get you started. Read more about Tools for Creating Editorial Calendars …

27 Apr

John Doherty Posted in Search Engine Optimization 17 comments

Identifying Link Patterns with SEO Tools

The other day I was doing competitor backlinking strategy analysis for a client of mine. Essentially, they wanted to know the backlink strategies of their competitors so that they could see where opportunity exists. I want to share the strategy that I used with you, so that you can use it to fairly quickly and easily identify your client’s (or your own) main competitors, and even further which competitors you need to examine more closely for their backlink strategies. Read more about Identifying Link Patterns with SEO Tools …

19 Apr

John Doherty Posted in Search Engine Optimization 17 comments

Linkbranding – A Linkbuilder’s Marketing Mindset

Linkbuilding is always a hot topic in the industry, with people wanting to know how to build more and better links faster while putting in less time. Linkbuilders have historically just thought about “how can I get more links with better anchor text”? It doesn’t matter where you get the links from, in their estimation. Rather, it matters that you get the right anchor text.

I think this is the wrong way to look at linkbuilding. At the very least, it’s shortsighted and doesn’t give you the full impact that thinking about linkbuilding in a different way could. I call this type of linkbuilding linkbranding.
Read more about Linkbranding – A Linkbuilder’s Marketing Mindset …

16 Apr

John Doherty Posted in Uncategorized 2 comments

SEO Presentation from General Assembly

On Sunday I taught a class at General Assembly, a startup incubator, to a group of Chinese entrepreneurs from the 2012 ECSEL Fellows Program. Basically, they are all entrepreneurs who are running companies that have been dubbed as important to the Chinese future and are pushing forward in their respective industries to make change. Some […]