Search Engine Marketing Blog: piloSEO

Good SEOs are not cheap but the rewards for an online business can be astronomical. Many businesses understand this but there are still a bunch of companies out there that try find the cheapest SEO provider available rather than paying a bit more for high quality SEO service. Of course, in the end these same businesses are getting walloped in the SERPs by their competition who conducted exhaustive research and found the best SEO. Their competitors realized that the additional cost associated with a professional SEO would bring them increased revenues and profits in the long run. SEO is a specialized service and while almost everyone who designs websites claims they do SEO, real SEO professionals provide a valuable service and bring extensive expertise that only comes with an immersion into the SEO world.

Would you use your life insurance guy for stock advice?

Both are in the financial industry but they are completely different disciplines. I know I prefer to consult a stock broker or investment adviser for stock and investment advice and my insurance agent to discuss insurance options. Why is SEO different? I kind of chuckle when I see EVERY web developer (or hosting company) offer ultra cheap or even free SEO service with their design or hosting package. That is until I see the “SEO” service they are providing. Most of the time it is outdated service that never worked in the first place. Even if the additional cost is minimal it is not going to be worth it. If you want to succeed in a competitive industry you need someone who knows SEO and real SEOs are not going to be cheap. The money spent on real SEO will end up being beneficial in the long run though.

If I got arrested I would not try to find the cheapest lawyer

No, if I got arrested I would try to find the BEST lawyer. Of course, since I never ever do anything that would lead to me being arrested I don’t have to worry about this :>) but my point is when I need a professional I want to hire the best professional I can. Sure, there are some who would be out of my price range but I am going to do what I can to get the best lawyer that I can afford. Business owners should use the same logic when it comes to hiring an SEO. If you want to be successful you need to find the right person for every job. Find the best hosting company you can afford, the best developer you can afford, the best IT professional you can afford, and the best SEO you can afford. Each of these professionals provide a highly specialized service and will end up helping you put your best foot forward. Many businesses will spend whatever it takes for hosting and design and then skimp on SEO. In the end that beautiful web site with rock solid hosting ends up getting no visitors and all the money spent is never returned. Spend a bit extra for that professional SEO to take advantage of your beatiful webiste. SEO can be expensive but when all of the work done on your site pays off it will all be worth it.

Popularity: 26% [?]

When discussing SEO with clients and potential clients SEOs sometimes neglect to emphasize that they need to tell us about any changes they are planning for their site. Whether they believe the changes have any SEO ramifications or not it is imperative to let your SEO know. Even minor and seemingly unrelated changes can have major implications on SEO work. If we don’t explain and reinforce the need for complete transparency related to site updates our clients may make what they consider minor changes that can have a major impact on their sites potential to rank well.

Seemingly Minor Changes Can Destroy SEO Efforts

Even the most seemingly insignificant change can have a massive impact on SEO work. I recently worked with a client who decided to make a small change to their website without consulting with me about the impact of such a change. To be fair this change seemed totally unrelated to SEO so the client assumed that they could make the change without talking to me about it. When I checked their site and saw what they had done I immediately contacted them to explain the potential negative impact. I think I caught it in time but the damage could have been fairly significant if it had been allowed to remain active.

Tell Your SEO About All Site Updates

No matter what change you make you should let you SEO about it.  SEO is a two way street. SEOs are focused on providing site owners with recommendations on how to help their site perform better in search engines but those site owners should understand that they need to inform their SEO about any changes they will be making too. An open conversation is important and can be the difference between success and failure. So, even if you are adding a few new links or some minor feature make sure your SEO knows what you are doing so you understand the implications and verify those changes are search engine friendly.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Everybody hates Me and I don’t care

Yeah, I am an SEO and much of the Internet hates me. Of course most of the people who rail against SEO’s have a very misguided idea about what an SEO actually is but part of the beauty of the Internet is that you don’t have to know what the hell you are talking about to be considered an expert. To many of the “thought leaders” at the big social sites SEO=SPAM. To some SEO’s this is troublesome because they are concerned about their “reputation”. It does not really bother me that some power users at Digg or Stumble Upon have a misguided hatred of anything SEO. I know I provide a valuable service to the clients who utilize my service and expertise.

Embrace the Outlaw Reputation

When I started in SEO it was a field that was relatively unknown. At that time Internet marketing consisted of banner ads and email spam to the average user. I will admit my knowledge of SEO was very raw back then and what we were doing was patently black hat. I had no idea that it was but it was. Over time I learned a lot more and quickly gravitated towards the whiter shade but I still hold some of the outlaw ideals that were ingrained in me back then. Today many power users still consider SEO to be the realm of spammers and black hats. While they still exist and tend to be more noticeable (everyone loves controversy) most SEO’s have a desire to help their clients succeed and help the search engines index and return useful information. After all, we have to use search engines too. Even though this is the reality many still consider SEO’s as manipulators of the Internet and will hate us regardless. I say embrace it and relish in the outlaw status. As long as SEO’s provide valuable service to their clients they will continue to have an important position in the world of online marketing.

Everybody hates lawyers…until they need one

How many lawyers do you hear complaining about their reputation? Not many. That is because they know that they can truly help people in need. Sure, there are plenty of lawyers out there who deserve the scorn and ridicule they get but for the most part they provide a valuable service to their clients when they are in a tough situation. SEO’s are hated by many Internet geeks but when a small business needs help competing against the big dogs many times it is an SEO that can help them do just that. Everyone hates SEO’s until they need one. So my challenge to all the SEO’s out there is to be more like lawyers. Embrace your reputation and continue to provide valuable services to those in need of your help.

Popularity: 100% [?]

One of the main points that many SEO advocates use is that high quality SEO can help the little guy compete with big businesses. This is a good point and is mostly true. A small company that utilizes the efforts of a good SEO, or one with a lot of internal SEO knowledge, can compete with and succeed against much larger brands. There are a many reasons for this but a few of big reasons are as follows.

• Small companies are more agile and can implement SEO projects more quickly.
• Small companies have smaller budgets so free traffic is much more important.
• Small companies are much more focused and they don’t have layers of red tape to work through.

So, what about big businesses?

I don’t see a lot of people talking about SEO for big businesses. Now I understand that many big businesses either use in-house SEO’s or simply don’t actually consider utilizing SEO. After all they get by on their name and paid search. It can also be very difficult to work with a big company on an SEO project so many SEO’s don’t want to work with them. But there is a lot to be said for working on a big businesses’ SEO project. There are some issues that need to be overcome though.

Working on a big business SEO project

So, big business SEO is much different than working with a small to medium sized business. There are some issues that need to be dealt with but if you can overcome the following issues the rewards can be huge.

1. You Must Have an Advocate: This is imperative when working on a big business SEO campaign. You must have at least one person, preferably at a high level, who believes in what you are doing and willing to push everyone to implement your recommendations. Without an advocate it will be nearly impossible to get SEO efforts implemented and all your effort will be for naught. Make sure someone within the company believes in SEO and has the authority to push SEO recommendations through.
2. Integrate all the Players: One of the biggest issues in big business SEO is that there are multiple levels within the company. You will need to deal with the owners of separate business units as well as IT, Legal, Editorial, and other departments. It is important to bring in these different business units when delivering recommendations. Make each unit feel they are part of the process and that they know what the need to do. If everyone feels they are included it will make them feel that they are part of a team and make them more willing to implement the recommendations you make. Your advocate can help with this.
3. Understand the Ultimate Goal: This is common amongst both large and small businesses but is especially important when dealing with the disparate business units of a big business. You have to control the conversation and keep on task when dealing with the different business heads. While all business units want what is best for the company each business unit also considers what is best for them. It is important to understand what the ultimate goal is and push each business unit to focus on that goal.
4. Control the Time Line: This is a huge aspect when it comes to running an SEO campaign for big businesses. Each unit has multiple projects that require their attention right now. Since SEO is a long term project it is easy for a big business to put it on the back burner. Because of this it is important to control the process and make sure everything stays on schedule. Othrwise the project will go on forever. Stay on top of everything and make sure your advocate pushes for the SEO work to stay in the forefront.
5. Deliver Implementable Recommendations: When dealing with big businesses it is difficult to get direct access to their servers. They have too much sensitive information and too many legal issues to deal with to allow vendors direct access. That means you will need to develop easily implemented recommendations. The best case scenario is to create SEO recommendations that they can simply copy and paste. Again, when the time comes to deliver recommendations it is necessary to help each unit understand what needs to be done and help them understand how to implement these recommendations. Bring in your advocate and include everyone who will need to implement the recommendations in the conversation so you are all on the same page.

Get it right

Following these recommendations will help you control the SEO process with big businesses. Get it right and you will have happy clients. Failure will lead to unhappy clients who will let others know that you did not deliver what you promised. Big businesses offer a huge opportunity if you control the engagement and succeed in achieving their goals.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Medium & large retail E-commerce sites represent an excellent opportunity to rank well across a wide range of keywords with fairly high search volume. On top of that they can provide an extremely focused user experience when their highly relevant product pages are called up for specific searches. The quicker a user can find what they are looking for the more likely they are to purchase from a site. This is the logic behind focused landing pages and landing page optimization in PPC. SEO should follow the same logic. SEO for e-commerce sites should concentrate on specific product level pages as well as the more generic top level pages. Quality SEO will try to capture both the high level searches as well as the myriad of long tail terms associated with specific products.

Customers want to find what they searched for ASAP

For example, if you own a sporting goods store that sells hockey sticks the best user experience would be to show a page selling the specific hockey stick for which a user searched. As a potential customer if I search for an Easton Synergy hockey stick I really want to find pages that are specific to that query. I am more likely to find a page related to my exact query more useful and I will be more likely to buy from that site. If I have to search around for the product I will be less satisfied and will be more likely to move on to another site with more relevant results. As I take a look at results for the search phrase Easton Synergy hockey sticks I find a few sites that are close to getting it right but the majority either send the user to the home page or category level page. While the category level pages are a bit more useful I would prefer to find the specific product level page.

Easton Synergy Hockey Sticks

Why is it so hard to find product specific pages?

The reason it is difficult to rank these specific pages is due to the nature of e-commerce sites. Most medium and large e-commerce sites tend to rely on generic information provide by the manufacturer. This leads most competing retailers to have the same exact content as their competitors. Since search engines want to show unique information that means only the strongest site will show up in the top of the SERPs. As you can see here both of the sites in the following screenshots have the same exact product descriptions. They may be situated differently on the page but the fact is it looks like the same thing to a search engine crawler.

Joes

Dicks

Neither of these pages showed up in the top ten results when searching for Easton Synergy Hockey sticks even though they provide more relevant content for the query. The fact is that since every single page selling that hockey stick has the same exact content it becomes very difficult for any of them to rank well.

Make Every Page Unique

Don’t just focus on the higher level pages simply because they provide the best opportunity to rank well for more popular keywords. The low hanging fruit is in the product level pages. Most medium to large e-commerce sites have thousands of these pages and the competition is less intense. That means there are thousands of chances to rank well for highly relevant keywords that lead to a better user experience and more sales. By adding some unique content to these pages it will be much easier to rank for the highly specific (and relevant) keywords. Don’t simply slap on the manufacturer provided text and images. Add some of your own interesting commentary, allow users to add their own reviews, add some additional images, etc. Make your pages stand out to search engines and visitors and you will be able to grab the thousands of users who are searching for the products your site sells.

Popularity: 34% [?]