That PokerSEO site seems garbage.

You can ask any knowledgeable poker affiliate in the world and they will known and most likely respect Randy Ray. PokerStars hired him to do their SEO a while back and he was hired on by one of the largest poker sub affiliate networks, PAP, a few years ago as well.

But yea, you probably know better.

I'm not saying he doesn't know what he's talking about, but the site looks stupid and shilly and super basic (on purpose).

It's super duper thin and basic.

3 TIPS TO GREAT SEO:

1) HAVE GOOD CONTENT
2) DONT BE DUMB
3) DONT FORCE IT

Didn't see you already called it generic. Anyway, didn't mean to ruffle your feathers, just said it looks dum!

Thanks Trikkur.

Anyone in here do SEO/PPC for a living?

Yup I work at Distilled as an SEO consultant.

I run my own websites for my job and do all my own SEO. I've also done some small consulting gigs for a few people.

I've never done PPC though. My primary sites are all poker related and Google won't allow it. I really do need to diversify though. Black Friday raped me and I'm still trying to rebuild from the after effects.

Have you had any gigs/clients yet?

I just thought we might have some posters on here doing PPC/SEO on their own for a living at a business/agency or I guess freelance etc.

Cwar, when you work for a company like Distilled what exactly are you duties as a SEO consultant? Do you get paid on salary or just like a % fee per project?

I'm doing more and more PPC for both my own purposes and third parties.

I have one client at the moment that is mine and I'm starting 2-3 more in the next two weeks after linklove in Boston. The way Distilled works is each client has one SEO as a point of contact but others do work on the project usually based on expertise (or sometimes availability).

Well I came from in-house and I'm fairly certain Distilled is quite unique compared to other agencies so I don't think it will be the same across the board. I've only been here a little under two months but every week has been very different just depending on what's happening with clients. I've been involved in everything from pitching new clients to blogging to the usual link building, keyword research, technical changes kind of thing. There is a huge variety in the day to day, its awesome The clients are really cool public companies like Yelp, Amazon and also a lot of VC backed startups, couldn't ask for a better experience so far.

This sounds really awesome cwar. How did you find the opening at Distilled? Are the offices located by you or do you work from home for them? Is it a full time thing or do you just get a certain amount of tasks to complete?

It's full time I moved from Las Vegas to NYC to join up. I got the job by building a website with my resume and reaching out to a bunch of SEOs and at some point they emailed me which was cool . I believe we are still hiring in NYC if anyone was interested.

I noticed that I'd received a few visitors from this thread, so I thought I'd stop by and say hello.

To Trikkur: Thanks for the recommendation and the kind words about my site and the content there.

To Phresh: Sorry you think my site looks like garbage.

Hey man,

What was your background prior to working there? Had you worked for another SEO firm, or primarily done your own campaigns/had your own clients?

About 2 years running my own online businesses (nothing particularly successful) and a little over a year as a web content manager in-house. That said depending on the firm experience is definitely negotiable, there's a lot of ways to get in the industry with little to no experience.

User experience/general site functionality question:

Do newsletter sign ups typically have the email "verification" process? (think "click this link to verify your email")

If I want to offer something for free in exchange for signing up for the newsletter (ebook etc) and a user puts in their email address into the newsletter sign up, should they then get an email asking them to verify their email address before we send out the free ebook or should we not care and just try to send the book and not worry about it if they put in a bad email address which gets bounced?

If we end up sending a bunch of emails that bounce because of the lack of email verification, will that hurt us with our future email deliverability? We currently use sendgrid.com fwiw.

Thanks for any thoughts!

I would not ask for a verification. I think the purpose of the newsletter is for people that are not really interested but still interested so making it easier for them is the way to go.

As for worrying about emails bouncing and your reputation. I would not worry about it unless you are sending mass emails or your purchasing mailing lists(leads) .when you send emails using sendgrid and it bounces or gets unsubscribed, it automatically removes it from your list meaning the sendgrid smtp server would not send a newsletter to that same email address again.(I know it blocks emails that unsubscribed but I'm not sure if it blocks bounces. but in either case, you will receive a report of any emails that bounced and you can remove it manually)
I would also upgrade to the package that has the dedicated server option.
Also to add, make sure to warm up your ip when starting out, don't send mass emails intially , they have an article on sendgrid that gives you a few tips on preserving reputation etc..

Hey guys, just found this thread and have a some questions..

-what is the best way to find good affiliates? I already have a my own affiliate program integrated within my website. Should I just be emailing websites and ask them to become affiliates , Are there other options?

-Is there a way to search for blogs that fit a certain category? for example , my website is a sports related website. I would like to get a list of as many sports bloggers as I can , email them and have them post our banner on their blog.

-When deciding on buying ad space on other websites or forums , what do I look for to justify the price
I tried to get a traffic report on most of the sites using statbrain, but I can not get it to work. Any other tips?

thanks in adv

I've just spent friggin hours and hours sorting out email on our site. Here's the way I would do it. Some of these are technical, some are so you don't get listed as a spammer and some are so that your customers are confident in you and don't mark you as spam. Some are also legal requirements.

1) Make sure they opt in initially (don't have the checkbox auto checked)
2) Make sure they verify the email address
3) Make sure each email has a direct unsubscribe link on it
4) Make sure the unsubscribe link takes them to a place where they don't need to login/verify anywhere it just lets them in one step remove themselves from the list
4) At the footer of each email have a short sentence explaining why they are receiving the email
5) Include your company name/address at the footer of the email if you have one
6) Make sure your SPF headers are correctly set up
7) (Optional) make sure DKIM is set up

Users who report your emails as spam will harm your delivery. This is why it's essential to make sure you keep spam complaints to an absolute minimum.

I also think bounces can harm delivery to some providers (we currently use Amazon SES and they recommend to keep bounces to a minimum) so I would regularly prune your list of bounced addresses.

It's tempting to not require verification for better vanity statistics, but you want to build a quality list. If you can look at your list and say "These 100 people opted in, read my newsletter and want to receive it" you have a powerful and reliable marketing tool. If you have a whole bunch of non verified people you will soon run into delivery problems, complaints etc. Build a quality list!

Yes, you MUST require them to verify their e-mail. This is called a double opt-in process (they sign up for newsletter and then verify) and is required by most anti-spam laws. Some newsletter services will do this for you such as Aweber; but if you are doing everything in-house, make sure you don't skip the double opt-in.

thanks guys

Definitely ask them to verify.

The difference is very tiny and you'll have a peace of mind knowing that they confirmed to receive emails from you.

Do u do mainly SEO type work or also a lot of PPC work - adwords/Facebook etc? Do most of the SEOs you work with also do PPC?

I have yet to do PPC at Distilled (I've done a small amount before). We do offer PPC but only have a couple people dedicated to it, I would say the average SEO has some light PPC experience with a couple of people who are absolutely sick at it. Definitely something I want to learn more about.