John Doherty

Over the last week and a half, I gave talks at Searchfest in Portland and MNSearch in Minneapolis about technical SEO. I pulled one over on both audiences though, as the real meat of the talks was about getting buy-in for making technical changes on your website (what I called technical SEO debt.

I defined technical SEO debt as:

A metaphor referring to the eventual consequences of poor or evolving architecture or SEO problems/dependencies within a website.

Both talks started with the statement that many sites need to quit focusing on linkbuilding and fix the technical debt that they owe on their websites. You see, every executive is busy and has their hands in multiple pots, so for any of the departments under them they need something to hang their hat on – rankings, traffic, revenue, whatever. For a lot of marketing managers or CMOs, who have only a very rudimentary understanding of SEO, that will be links, so they push for more links as that is what they understand. They think links will get them the money that they want, but we all know that is not true.
Read more about Creating Buy-In For Technical SEO Debt …

The Internet has a content problem. Every day more and more content is being pushed out into the nether regions (ok, that’s inappropriate) of the Internet and most of it is terrible. And worse than that, the good content that is published on the Internet is few and far between and hard to find.

My goal with this blog is to help people get their content found. Because of this I’ve written posts like:
11 Ways To Drive Gobs Of Traffic To Your Site
A Blog Is Not A Content Strategy
Linkbait Is Not A Content Strategy
The Future of Cross Platform Publishing

We’re being inundated with a lot of crap content as well these days. Every post I see on Inbound.org (so basically all content produced by “marketers”) is “How To…”, “X Reasons That…”, “The Ultimate Guide To…” Read more about The Internet’s Content Problem …

A lot of talk has happened about content, content marketing, and blogging in 2012. We can thank Google, Tom Critchlow, and people like CopyBlogger for this, and I truly do. I love content and writing, and content writing and content marketing. I love it so much that I told people to stop blogging if they’re not going to put the time and effort into it.

I often have people tell me that I’m a good writer. That’s not a humblebrag, it’s a statement of fact. The truth is that I have always been a writer and loved writing, but honestly I used to suck at it. I’ve been writing on the Internet, on blogs of various kinds, for a decade now. And honestly, a lot of my stuff used to suck. And honestly, a lot of content I wrote on this site when I started it almost 2 years ago now….sucked.

I think I’m a decent writer and blogger now. So how have I done it?

The answer is plain and simple – I’ve written, practiced, and analyzed the results, and then written some more, practiced new lessons, and analyzed the results, then I write… You get the idea. Read more about Becoming A Better Writer …

Alternatively – “When Saying Yes Hurts”

I see a lot of bloggers writing about the importance of saying “no”, and then I often see responses to these such as “Good for you!” and “Alright, way to get your priorities in order!” The interesting thing to me is that when someone says that they are learning to say no, it means they are already really good at saying “Yes.”

You don’t have to learn how to do something if you already know how to do it.

I can’t help but think, though, if sometimes we have to say “Yes!”. I want to talk about the types of people and priority in which saying “yes” is. Hopefully this speaks to the values through which I live my life. I started thinking about this post because I’m currently at TechStars’ Foundercon in Boston, just 5 days after I got back to NYC from Boston, because a respected industry peer asked me to speak in their stead. I wanted to and I needed to. Read more about Prioritizing “Yes” …

Recently I read an article called Content Marketing – Johnson & Johnson style. This article does an amazing job of dissecting some companies that are engaging in non-branded content marketing that supports their core business (mostly through internal advertising), namely Johnson & Johnson, American Express, AOL, the USPS, and GE.

This article flies in the face of people who say “My industry/niche is boring; how can I create linkworthy content?” To this I often think:

Boring content is only created by boring people. No industry is boring – only people are boring.

To combat this, I use a practice that I like to call B2C Linkbuilding for B2B Verticals. Read more about B2C Linkbuilding for B2B Industries …

I have never interviewed someone on this blog before. Every now and then, though, I come across someone who I think deserves to have more exposure in the industry because they add a lot of value and in genuinely an awesome person. One of those people to me is Jonathon Colman. He’ll introduce himself here in a minute, but he and I got connected online earlier this year, and since then I think we’ve both taught each other a lot. I’m looking forward to properly meeting him in person this next week as I’m in Seattle for Mozcon, and it is a pleasure to have the first interview published on this blog to be with him!

Find him here on Twitter and here on Google+. And he shares some awesome photos on Google+ too.

  
Read more about Interview with Jonathon Colman of REI …

I recently read this article on SearchEngineLand, asking if SEO/online marketing companies might need to protect their company from clients who essentially “go rogue” and start building links in ways that are against Google’s guidelines, and are not necessarily links that you would build for them. The whole article is built around the premise of iAcquire being deindexed (though we should note that this was because of iAcquire’s actions, not their clients’).

I respect Tony Wright and what he has done for the SEO and online marketing community, and this article brings up the important point about SEOs/consultants overall and their clients.

Read more about Be The Expert …

SEO is not about quick wins. I get asked all the time to “give us something that we can do now that will have a noticeable effect”. People, everyone, wants to get the most bang for their buck, and this especially happens in business where there is direct pressure to produce ROI. After all, no one brings in a consultant until they are unable to solve their own problems. At this point, your problems become mine. And if you’ve been seeking quick wins and they’re not working, what the heck makes you think that me giving you quick wins is going to fix your problems? Quick wins have not been solving your issues until now, so why do you think anything is going to be different with my quick wins?

Remember, doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results isn’t smart. It’s actually a sign of madness. Read more about From Quick Wins to Hard Work …

Let’s talk about virality and viral growth. I live in New York City and work in online marketing, so I’m on the Internet pretty much all the time. And since I am on the Internet all the time, I notice trends. One trend that I have noticed is that a lot of tech startups are focused on viral growth. When asked how they plan to go, I get an answer along the lines of:

Oh, you know, we’ve got this rockstar developer guru who has hooked us into the OpenGraph, so we’re going to autopost everything you do on our site onto their wall. Then, their friends will see it and we’ll have millions of users in no time and we’ll get bought for 1 billion dollars just like Instagram!

Newsflash for you: this is a terrible idea if your only way to grow is through Facebook.
Read more about Viral Growth Pisses Me Off …

Here’s my current state of mind: I haven’t taken a “real” break in a number of months (where I completely unplugged), so that’s what I’m doing right now at the Mountain Film Festival in Colorado. I’m mostly offline from Thursday afternoon to Wednesday. I’ll be honest and say that I’ve hit a bit of writer’s […]