Have you ever wondered what makes a basketball team work well?

Is it the one superstar? How about the role players helping out? What about the leadership of a great coach? My opinion is all of the above.

Now, what makes a great SEO team? Is it the agency you choose, or is it the all-star SEO manager? Maybe you’ve just started working with your SEO team on your website, and you’re wondering what’s going on behind the scenes.

Since we’re just days away from March Madness 2013, I thought it would be appropriate to explain just how similar an SEO team is to a basketball team.

The Point Guard

This is your SEO Manager. You want a great SEO manager directing the play of your efforts just like you would want a great point guard directing the play of the game, like Chris Paul (CP3). These are the ones who will guide the rest of the team in in getting points on the board, and making sure positive results are being made.

The Shooting Guard

This is your SEO Specialist. Here is someone who is going out and finding all the best places to acquire high quality links for your site, and is making things happen just like a great shooting guard would do. You think of all the great shooting guards in the game, like Jordan, Michael or Bryant, Kobe, and they are the ones leading the team in scoring.

The Small Forward

Meet your Content Strategist. He or she will work with the copywriter just like a small forward and a power forward do on the hardwood. The content strategist must be creative, and be able to come up with topics and ideas that are unique and click-worthy. Just like Kevin Durant is able to create shots out of nothing, and you are often left with your jaw on the floor when you see his creativeness in action, a great piece of content can often do the same.

The Power Forward

Here is your Copywriter. This position needs to stick to the fundamentals to get the job done in the most effective way, and the writing needs to be on point and consistent with your brand. Tim Duncan is the epitome of consistency, for example. You know what you are going to get out of him night in and night out, and the same goes for your copywriter.

The Center

This is your SEO Analyst. They will be using their strength (analytical expertise) to defend against the other team (competition). The SEO Analyst stays in constant contact with the SEO Manager, and regularly updates the team on the performance of the website and how visitors interact with the pages and content. Similarly, the Center will stay close to the basket, and will often anchor the defense.

The Coach

Here is the Marketing Agency. A good coach is proven through a consistent track record and experience, and when choosing an agency you also should make sure they have a proven track record and have the experience. The great basketball coaches like Phil Jackson, Jerry Sloan,and Chuck Daly all have their own effective ways of getting the most out of their players, and an agency should do the same with their employees.

The Referees

Matt Cutts, head of Webspam at Google.
Photo credit: Jehochman

The search engines. I’m talkin’ about you, Google. Make sure to play by their rules and if you are not, you’ll end up fouling out and losing the game.

The March Madness Guide To SEO is a post by SEO expert Trenton Hymas. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

In the world of search engine optimization, competitive intelligence is an indelible source of campaign sustenance. Knowing where competitors are ranking for key terms, and more importantly, why they might have better rankings than your site, is information you simply cannot go without. I am going to walk through a few different ideas that will help effectively analyze search competitors.

Of the many competitive research tools available, Open Site Explorer shines brightly above the alternatives. It’s very intuitive – first time users will find it incredibly easy to use. You simply enter your URL, along with up to 4 competitors, and you get lots of data to start analyzing.

Total External Links

External links are useful see how you compare to competitors in online conversation and presence, and will help you set goals in your SEO strategy.

Link building can be a numbers game, and this report will help you determine whether it’s quantity, or quality (meaning high value) links that you lack compared to other sites in your industry.

Total Linking Root Domains

The Total Linking Domains report gives you a look at the diversity of domains sending links to your competitor’s websites. If you see that they have a high number of links, but a low number of total linking root domains, you know that they are getting most of their links from the same domains. It is better to have both a high number of links as well as a high number of linking root domains.

Linking C Blocks

The Linking C Blocks (or C class IPs) report refers to the IP addresses of linking websites.

While very similar to the Linking Root Domains report, this isn’t the same thing. C Blocks are your way of identifying the true backlink diversity of any given website. Getting 500 links from 500 unique C Block IP addresses is more impressive to search engines than 500 links from 500 different domains that are hosted on the same IP (or even C Block IP), which may look suspiciously like a linking network.

It is always best to have both a high number of linking root domains and a high number of linking C blocks in your link portfolio.

Evaluating the ratio between C blocks and linking root domains is also a quick way to identify whether a particular competitor is using a network of links.

Back Link Portfolio

After we have looked through these stats and set some goals on what you want to accomplish in your strategy we can next pull the backlink portfolio and see exactly where the competitors are getting their links. It is always best to sort their link portfolio by highest to lowest by page authority. This way you can start with their highest authoritative links and analyze and see how they got their link on that site and figure out a way to get a link on that site as well, weather it is a directory that you can place a link or a blog that you can offer a guest post to. It helps to think outside the box and figure out a way to get a link on their site.

Hopefully these tips will help you the next time you analyze your competitors and you will be able to find some high quality links for your site.

4 Competitive Reports Your SEO Will Die Without is a post by SEO expert Trenton Hymas. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.