Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
More importantly, I can run a competitive marketplace analysis, I can do keyword research, I can create a strategic plan, but traditional SEO has become only a small part of the total Internet marketing package. SEO, SEM and SMO do not live in vacuums. To be effective today a business must implement a well-rounded program with an emphasis on those areas where their (usually limited) budget can have the greatest impact.
The anxiety associated with new site launches or site modifications increases monthly and having someone validate, refute or adjust my strategies would be worth a lot.
Then, they build a directory and then populate the directory with these 96 similar (so relevent I Guess!?) domains so trying to game google.
I dont know how widespread this kind of thing is but is it spam? I certainly think so - and told my client that. Putting a 100 identical websites into google just to manipulate IBLs?
Is this the definition of creating a bad neighbourhood?
Please let me hear your comments - Is it Spam?
PS - Google of course ignores these links - but Yahoo's been suckered!
I don't like to use the term "SEO" as applies to myself, because I think there is now a perception of trying to game the system, even when it's perfectly legitimate. What I consider to be "SEO" is just applying common sense to the way a website is put together (or for that matter, to the way a PPC campaign is executed). And there's definitely a market for people who can do that. I am almost to the point of having to turn people away now. (And we haven't updated our own website in YEARS because we don't have time)
As I've said before - I can save money by cutting my own hair, but I might not like what I end up with (and I speak from experience on that one!)
Trouble is all the seo's I admire are usually far too busy.
Yup - there is no two ways around this - the folks that call you on the phone to try to gain your business and the real folks that know their (and your) business, are worlds apart.
Whatever they may do and whatever you may do doesn't really matter.
The most important point (for the long run) is - can you communicate.
It isn't about search engines it's about communication.
A recent thread somewhere on these boards lamented that tech changes too fast -- we have nothing to pass on to our children, in the fashion that other livelihoods often do.
My reply to that is exactly your most "excell"-ent point. Our trade is deeply involved in communication and logic. Those are the two core skills that will be required for generations. Without those two cornerstones, you can't even formulate a question precisely enough to get the information you need.
And these are the qualities I think any good SEO needs to display. If a potential client is tuned in to that level, they will not go far wrong in hiring an SEO.
True. And this requires continuous work and improvement. Recently someone pointed me towards an article, which described the next levels of abstraction concerning SEO or website-communication: Namely to initiate inside the company some sort of "corporate awareness" about the necessity to improve the website, so that if possible all departments of a medium or larger company will contribute to this process.
I guess the hardest job for those of you, who act as succesful SEO-consultants, is, to convince people inside your client's company that you actually are NOT threatening/questioning their job and competence.
I have a small bricks and mortar business. My part-timers are happy if they manage to successfully send an email. Anything beyond that is my part, from network administration to SEO.
How can I bring this to a level where my website begins to grow without myself doing anything (except giving some ideas or advices)? I believe we are far too small to hire an external company, and the cold-callers normally prove themselves completely incompetent quite quickly. Or am I just too stubborn? Should I try to hire one or two students?
Given the recent trauma that Google has inflicted in our lives
Trauma = Opportunity? I hear truthiness. :)
Does anyone truly understand Google's algo's and inner workings?
Even Matt Cutts has to visit with different teams at Google when he wants to understand how the Google algorithm handles different things.
It is still a practice where proven and tested practices work.
Not to mention using creativity and originality when it comes to attracting links.
Look at SEO as a recipe made of different ingredients.
Just don't drink the cooking sherry.
An experienced optimizer will apply multiple techniques to get you to the top.
No one wants to be a bottom in this field.
The days of paying someone to edit your meta tags and get you a few hundred links are hopefully fast receding.
That's why 4 out of 5 SEOs recommend Rogaine.
I would personally never pay someone to do it, its to easy to research and do for yourself.
Especially when you could be doing something else that makes money as well.
I wouldn't recommend them to anyone purely because you don't know what lengths they will go to show you they can do any good.
Any businessperson worth their salt can spot a con artist, especially if they deal with management consultants.
--also
Recommend people and companies you trust, enthusiastically and happily. If you cannot make a positive recommendation then give no recommendation. Never give a negative recommendation (oxymoron?). If a consulting firm tells me to call you and you say, "I really do not have any recommendation to give one way or the other" I will get the message loud and clear.
--also
Some of the best consultants I've ever met have had very bad things said about them because they were honest and forthright and upstanding and they did a good job instead of a gloss job. The people saying the bad things usually had something to hide or be embarrassed about.
I've heard other companies have set up hundreds of sites for link strategies, or have access to such. And I guess others, when you stop employing them would remove all these links so you plummet again.
There are shady lawyers out there too. Ugliness is hardly limited to any one field. One of the most important parts of any consulting engagement is preparing a contract that addresses all the major issues. Smart companies have attorneys review their contracts before they are signed. This is not just to make sure everything is legal; it is also to assess risks.
I usually have a good laugh when they phone me up...I start asking them stuff like how they would approach the canonical URL problem
They usually begin telling me that they want to partner with me.
There's a huge difference between the SEO you locate on your own through networking.and recommendations -- and hiring an SEO who cold calls you.
The one who cold calls you does not have any business.
If I were to hire an SEO, I would also hire someone else to audit what they do.
You would also pay too much for it.
Again, a carefully constructed contract that details what the consulting engagement will entail, what the deliverables will be, and how any created content or accounts will be transferred -- all done before the engagement is agreed to -- will take care of these types of concerns. Have the contract reviewed, not the work.
Also, a good contract will serve as a guide so that the client can review the work themselves. If you need to hire another SEO to review your SEO’s work then that should be done by your lawyers, not you.
I'd say this very much depends on the nature of your particular business and the level, at which you're playing.
Guam versus Mount Everest anyone?
One of the key tasks today is, to constantly improve a website with fresh content driven from the industry-specific long tail. No computer- or SEO-expert will ever have a clue about any of those industry-specific details.
Actually-
When you were in school didn't you write authoritatively about stuff you had only recently studied?
Do you think John Battelle could create or operate a search engine? Would Rush Limbaugh make a good president? Does Procter and Gamble hire detergent scientists for their marketing teams? How does a ghostwriter write someone else';s autobiography?
Exhibit 1: A (very good) SEO firm is looking for someone who can write for their clients.
Good writers who are also good researchers can write about anything. They will also fact check and use the real experts to make sure that they got it right.
Good SEO firms use good writers. They do so either internally or they subcontract. When the client is not willing to have employees drop everything to write content you can do it for them and charge them for it.
I think you'll find most business owners concentrate on making their business work - which often doesn't involve studying search engines and rectifying associated problems.
At least the good ones.
What a good SEO will do is not talk about Search Engines and lists of keyphrases but will work at understanding your business, identifying your uniqueness, studying your target market(s), your competitors, your market position and your website to ensure that you will end up with not only high solid positioning that's going to work for the long term - but an excellent increase in business.
And if your market is extremely competitive they will look for ways to tap into alternative streams of qualified traffic separate from the search engines.
Why hire an SEO when you have what we have here?
Could be that after reading everything here you realize that the scope of the effort requires outside help.
My life depends on my SEO efforts
The same is true for SEO consultants, except that they are making their efforts on behalf of their clients.
SEO is like raising children. Some basic principles will apply across the board, but in the end you have to tailor your approach to suit the unique needs of the situation.
Which is why a good SEO consultant cannot write a worthwhile proposal without a competitive analysis that they can trust.
So what your saying is that just meta tags and some copy is going to make me #1?
Sure, if you are selling real estate in Antarctica.
To be perfectly honest, in answer to the question posed, SEO is *definitely* not always worth paying for.
And a good SEO consultant will tell you when your situation is hopeless. It could be because the market is too small or because you do not have the resources needed to rank well or any number of reasons. A good SEO will decline an unpromising project and tell you why.
SEO is simply learn from your failures.
Yes, I have learned a lot from my failures (and successes), however, most of my SEO knowledge was learned from the successes (and failures) of others.
A lot of time would often be saved if someone with even basic SEO knowledge had some input when the site was designed in the first place.
True, but most businesses are already too deep into their Internet marketing initiatives by now and they don't want you to come in and tell them that they have to dump their web sites and start from scratch.
SEO is very time consuming? News to me*. I don't put a whole lot of time in on it at all, for me or clients, and we do very well indeed, thank you.
Makes me wonder how many great business opportunities you are missing.
being able to extract specific action items from a huge mountain of data is a skill all on its own.
Perhaps the most important Internet marketing skill of them all: data mining.
Getting a major site beyond the early phases of SEO and into some of the finer points can also be well worth the money a corporation spends. When the potential return or loss is in the tens of millions of dollars or even more, a company doesn't need someone who is just playing around. Outsourcing their SEO work to a solid third party who can take a look from outside their corporate culture, but still get results from within the culture? That is often a very intelligent move -- especially if the knowledge they buy is full and well rounded.
Very well put. Companies like Nike have huge SEO/SMO budgets and use outside firms for exactly this reason, and that goes well beyond the early phases.
If it's good advice based, on good knowledge and converts your business to a good return on investment.
Just because something doesn't work does not make it a bad idea. Smart businesses use multiple marketing approaches because they know that they can have the best advice and knowledge and still get thrown out at first base.
The best thing is to identify professional SEO's that demonstrate a technical understanding.
In today's fast maturing Internet marketing environment, a solid social understanding of prospect behavior is just as important.
trust a service that creates authority sites otherwise stay away.
Or one that can outwit the authority sites.
if you are good you get business & don't need to make calls or look for clients
Smart businesses are always looking for new clients. Walk-in traffic is only one source of potential business in any market.
I can run a competitive marketplace analysis, I can do keyword research, I can create a strategic plan
Perhaps what separates good SEO/SEM/SMO and Internet marketing professionals from the bad is that good ones do or obtain the analysis first before proffering the strategic plan. That requires at least two separate consulting engagements and two contracts. Would you trust a consultant who offers you a complete package before they even research your business?
By the way, when preparing RFPs for large engagements it is often worth it to a consulting company to do the analysis and research on their own time and own dollar. The profit comes when they get a contract. And yes, a consultant might only land one in ten engagements so they have to take that into account when they set their rates.
I've often considered hiring an SEO to review and audit my site portfolio & strategies.
This is an enlightened statement. Even if you are doing your own work, getting an outside perspective can add tremendous value.
Yesterday I took a client off someone who's entire SEO campaign was built around buying 96 new domains for the client - putting up almost identical 4 page websites on each domain and linking back to the client.
That may have worked yesterday. The point I want to make here is that a good SEO keeps-up with changes to the industry and landscape.
I spend most of my time doing "SEO" for my clients, and the reason I put it in quotes is that my "SEO" largely consists of cleaning up previous messes or bringing a site up-to-date with whatever the latest search engine peculiarities are (most of which I get here) And to a large degree, that works, and it's way cheaper for the client.
You could call this realigning the baseline, and yes, this can have a tremendous positive (and financial) impact. However I would suggest that this only sets the stage for new possibilities.
For example, how much effort would it take to spend an afternoon with the person or people who prepares a company's media releases and train them how to optimize a press release and distribute them online? You could even toss in a monthly key phrase chart as a subscription product.
Find ways to take your clients' Internet marketing to new levels and you will find ways to grow your business.
A good seo is worth more than his or her weight in gold.
An a good Internet Marketer who knows SEO is worth the weight in platinum.
A good SEO firm will help you with site structure and flow.
And a good gastroenterologist will help you flow.
How can I bring this to a level where my website begins to grow without myself doing anything (except giving some ideas or advices)? I believe we are far too small to hire an external company, and the cold-callers normally prove themselves completely incompetent quite quickly. Or am I just too stubborn? Should I try to hire one or two students?
First, I would say that if an employee can write an email they can write an article. (You could offer a bounty for each article you publish on the Internet, limited offer for one year then review)
Second, call or write some SEO luminaries and briefly tell them about your situation and hopes. Many will offer advice and refer you to a solid competent consultant that is appropriate for you and who can help you. A good consultant will spend twenty or thirty minutes on the phone with you at no charge. They will assess you and your business and if they think they can help they will talk about next steps. If they cannot help you, you will probably still walk away with some valuable new advice or knowledge.
[edited by: tedster at 8:54 pm (utc) on Oct. 12, 2006]
[edited by: SEOcritique at 8:56 pm (utc) on Oct. 12, 2006]
At the very minimum you need to be sure you are applying the same meaning to the words you both use.
That's a heck of a lot easier to say than do.
The sandbox, its possible affect on your site, and how to deal with it, if it exists, comes to mind.
Then there's white hat vs black hat and all the grey hats in between the two extremes.
Get caught up in a couple subtle misunderstandings and you could end up watching the whole mess, money and rankings included disappear in a flash.
SEOcritique said: "Makes me wonder how many great business opportunities you are missing."
Actually, over the past couple of years, I've been developing a wide variety of start-up businesses with partners I locate through a certain process. I find these generate a lot more revenue than doing SEO for clients. And I don't have to deal with clients seeking SEO services, which (to me) is a blessing.
What I bring to these partnerships is my SEO skill set and business start-up and management experience. I field the inquiries from prospective customers and hand them off to the partner in that business. The partner then deals with each client, closes deals, does the work, collects payment for whatever service is provided, and sends me my percentage.
I'm happy.
