My PPC Ad Position Has Moved, Again!

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Angry SEM ClientThere’s a great deal of advice out there about selecting the right SEM agency so that your business reaps a positive return from the online marketing, but what about the SEM agency getting the perfect client?

As difficult as it can be for clients to work with agencies, there is a plethora of clients that give agencies significant headaches with continuous phone calls, repetitive questions and unrealistic expectations that impact the success of the project. Are you expecting your SEM agency to deliver PPC miracles on an unrealistic budget? Have you set SEO ranking expectations on an unrealistic timeline?

If you are one of those clients who constantly check their PPC sponsored listings, you should be aware of some of the factors that may affect your PPC ad positioning. So, before you pick up the telephone to scream at your SEM strategist because you typed in some important keywords but only the competitors’ ads come up, consider the dynamics that may affect your PPC ad position.

Performance of Your Ad, Relative to Search Query
The relative performance of the potential PPC ads that could be shown for each search query are dynamically evaluated by the search engines. What this means is that the performance of your ad will be measured against:

  • CTR of your ad relative to the specific search query – what is your historic click-through-rate for that ad variation?
  • The performance of competitive ads relative to yours for a search query – how well have your competitors’ ads performed relative to yours?
  • CTR performance for each keyword in your ad groups – what is your historic click-through-rate for individual keywords?

What you need to bear in mind is that each search query is dynamically evaluated, which means that if you type in a keyword for your business now and check the results, in all likelihood when you check that same keyword query in 5 minutes the ad positioning will be different. A number of elements interplay dynamically to determine the ad rank of each competitive ad vying for a ranking on a particular keyword.

Maximum Bid
Maximum bid is the single most influential factor under the advertiser’s control that drives ad positioning. If you would like your ad to be at the top of sponsored listings in the number 1 position, setting a high enough maximum bid on keywords can ensure this.

Why? Maximum bid and Quality Score are the elements of Ad Rank, i.e.:

Maximum Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank

Of course ranking in the number 1 ad position just for the sake of being number 1 cannot even be considered a bidding strategy. Your ad positioning should be driven by business metrics such as desired maximum customer acquisition (CPA) and it should be within the limit of your maximum CPC. Simply bidding up for higher rank positions may very quickly render the PPC efforts unprofitable for your business.

So, if you are one of those clients that obsessively like to see their PPC ads in the 1st position on the SERPs, stay calm if you see your ad in the 3rd of 4th positions. This may be the optimal position for your ad based on driving the highest level of relevant traffic to your site, within budget and at an acceptable cost & conversion rate within your business model.

Geographic Targeting
Be mindful, that if a specific campaign is targeting a geographic region that lies beyond the physical location from which you are checking your ad positioning, it is a good thing if you do not see your ads appearing!

Specific geo-targeted campaigns allow for tighter location-based targeting of your market. For this type of PPC campaign to be successful, campaign settings need to be set up so as to minimise “leakage” of ads appearing in non-relevant geographic regions.

Dayparting by You & Your Competitors
Avoid embarrassment – if your target market is in the B2B buying space and your customers are known to be the most active during business hours, then give your search marketer credit if they are rotating ads during specific hours, instead of ‘freaking out’ because the ads are not showing at 7:00am.

Also, bear in mind that the dayparting bid strategies of your competitors will affect your positioning. If a few competitors, with higher bids start appearing at a set time while your ad is showing, it may serve to drop your ad rank positioning. The greater the number of advertisers competing for a keyword, the more variable ad positioning will be.

A/B Testing of Ads
If you are testing your ad variations, which you should be, invariably there will be a weaker ad and a stronger ad. The ad with the higher CTR and greater perceived relevance may then have a higher ad position than the other one. When you type in a search query into the search engine, you cannot control which ad will be shown for that query.

Nebulous Search Engines
The fact is that the search engines have their unique algorithms according to which they may practice random testing, ad rotation, algorithm adjustments and Quality Score allocations. Not everything affecting ad position fluctuation can be explained according to a checklist of possible causes. Sometimes, the cause of a rank drop is due to the cumulative effect of a number of elements, some of which the advertiser can influence and others over which the search engines maintain exclusive control.

So, before you pick up that phone, consider that your SEM agency’s time would be better spent managing these dynamic elements of your PPC campaign, rather than having to explain the fundamentals to you, again!

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How Accountable is Your SEO Agency?

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Most SEO companies still talk about rankings as the first measure of SEO success, but is this really the best measure of their clients’ success?

Surely, clients would rather receive a monthly report that highlights the ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) of the SEO investment, instead of a ranking report with arrows pointing out whether organic rankings have dropped or increased?

According to a 2007 iProspect and JupiterResearch study, 58% of search marketers’ job performance was evaluated on the amount of traffic driven to a client website. This was the leading metric used to evaluate how successfully search marketers were doing their job, on the traffic generated to a site. Similarly, in 2005 the same metric was the lead indicator of success.

Two years later, it would be interesting to see comparative figures for 2009, but even without this, it still appears that many SEO agencies shy away from solid monetary business metrics in the evaluation of SEO campaigns. Perhaps this trend would be more prevalent among smaller businesses and agencies targeting the SME market, because the top tier agencies have bigger client budgets, larger campaigns and more demanding corporate metrics on which to deliver, but it remains a serious problem.

Poor measurement and reporting of key metrics is a concern because the majority of businesses fall into the SME category, which means that apart from multinationals that have the budgets to commission top tier agencies, most businesses are being fed these non-monetary metrics, that do not offer any accountability, as measures of SEO success.

A ranking report and traffic volume chart do not tell a meaningful story unless they are backed up by conversion metrics, sales figures, customer acquisition costs, return on ad spend calculations and ROI percentages from the search marketing efforts.

Keeping the Waters MurkyMurky Waters
It would appear that most companies are reluctant to make web traffic and search engine ranking secondary measures of success because this would make them far more accountable for the work they do. The SERP positioning for a particular keyword does not actually mean anything. A keyword’s positioning only begins to have meaning when incorporating further metrics relative to this positioning.

A number one ranking in the SERPs that does not deliver traffic because the keyword is not searched, is like no ranking at all. The same goes for a keyword that receives traffic but does not convert – whether this is because the page to which searchers are taken does not satisfy search criteria or because of the questionable credibility of the page to which traffic is driven.

By focusing on monetary metrics, companies could more easily justify a higher spend on SEO to their clients, especially if clients could see positive ROAS figures. In this way, SEO agencies could grow client spend from the existing client base rather than aggressively hunting new sales.

Unfortunately, a certain stigma appears to linger in the SEO industry, that the lowest hanging fruit is the easy money. It’s not the smoke and mirrors of the past, in which anxious clients were stalled by the mystical ‘sandbox’ but the SEO relationship still seems to be built on a ‘need to know basis’. This usually translates to keeping the client in the dark because from the reporting that is done, it does not seem that the client needs to know much!

If the client knew how little value those rankings were actually driving, well, that would create more accountability and work for the company, wouldn’t it?

Ironic though that companies choose this path because this creates agencies that become like factory lines, doing the same thing for every client, not pushing the status quo, bringing in more clients but generating minimal growth in the existing client base. The great companies will always rise to the top, but unfortunately, not every business has the budget to work with the top agencies. What this means is that clients need to become more educated and accountable for the types of SEO agencies with which they choose to work.

Next time you receive your monthly SEO reporting, ask yourself what it’s really telling you. Does it share ANY valuable data? If not, it is up to you to do demand the monetary metrics that speak to your business bottom line.

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SEM Agency Website Errors

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SEM Website ErrorsPerhaps businesses underestimate the effect that copywriting errors have on the credibility of their websites. Perhaps it is only a handful of people who are negatively affected and perturbed by these grammatical mishaps, but certainly, I for one can confidently say that these egregious blunders paint a lasting image of a business’ attention to the finer details.

When reviewing companies in the search engine marketing field, the attention to detail on the company website, or lack thereof is a subtle indicator of how efficiently and accurately the smallest details are executed. After all, pay-per-click advertising is a service that requires an incredibly high level of attention to the finest details, one incorrect bid or check in the wrong box, and there goes some of that valuable money that the hired company is supposed to be managing.

You may argue that in the greater scheme of things there are more important things to do than go through the website copywriting with a fine tooth comb, but I would argue to the contrary.

For years, job applicants have been hammered for grammatical and spelling errors on their applications. If judgement can be passed on an individual from a résumé document, then why should a company website not carry the same clout? It is after all, a company’s summary of its assets and services – a compelling online summary of what the company can offer you and why the fit would be mutually beneficial.

Below I will summarise some of the website copywriting errors that cleanly wipe off a few points on a company’s score sheet when they glaringly appear on the company site.

#1. AdWords NOT Adwords
When an SEM agency offers ‘Adwords’ management services, it is troubling to consider that said company cannot even take the time to correctly identify the trademark of the service that they are offering clients.

Correct spelling: AdWords – capital ‘A’ and capital ‘W’

#2. It’s 2009! Even closer to 2010 than 2008!
If you have STILL not changed your copyright stamp to ‘copyright 2009’ in mid-July, you may as well leave it until 2010 and perhaps be timely next year.

If it hasn’t been a priority to date, it’s unlikely to become one now.

#3. The ‘Effect’ of Misusing ‘Affect’
Confusion between effect and affect occurs frequently. In reality, both these words have a function as a verb and a noun, but rather than adding confusion into the mix, let’s focus on their commonly used English meanings.

  • Affect is commonly used as a verb. A synonym would be ‘to influence’
    i.e.: The relevance of keywords selected in an SEO project will affect traffic and conversions

  • Effect is commonly used as a noun. A synonym would be ‘outcome’
    i.e.: The relevance of keywords selected in an SEO project will have an effect on traffic and conversions

#4. The Apostrophe
There appears to be a widespread ignorance of the correct use of the apostrophe. The greatest misuse of the apostrophe arises when the distinction between a ‘contraction’ and a ‘possessive pronoun’ is not made, particularly in the use of its and it’s.

To clarify
The possessive pronoun: its
It replaces the noun and expresses a relationship of belonging

  • So, instead of saying: The company offers the company’s SEO services
  • We can say: The company offers its SEO services

The possessive pronoun (its) is commonly confused with the contraction of ‘it is’ which looks like (it’s)

There is a clear difference in meaning between it is (the contraction) and that which belongs to it (the possessive pronoun)

  • So, when you incorrectly write: The company offers it’s services
  • Understand that you are writing: The company offers it is services

If more people understood the grammar behind this contraction and the possessive pronoun, the error would be made less frequently, because the mistake would become glaringly obvious.

#5. That Blog Needs an Update
 It is disconcerting when SEM agencies and more so, social media experts host a blog but have not posted a new entry since, say February 2009. A thought, if you are updating your blog quarterly, perhaps it’s time to opt for a newsletter.

An infrequently updated blog tells clients that you may not take these resource intensive and repetitive tasks too seriously. The question may then arise, are any other time-consuming tasks in the search campaign being overlooked, such as monthly link building or ongoing monthly pay-per-click management?

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SEO Staff Turnover Rate Harms Clients

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SEO Staff Turnover‘How high is your SEO staff turnover rate?’ – It may not be something that everyone would think to ask a potential SEO firm, but perhaps it should be one of the first questions posed when commissioning SEO services.

If a company has a high turnover rate, this has serious implications for both the client as well as the team that remains and constantly has to absorb employees leaving and new members coming on board.

SEO Team Dropping Like Flies?
The SEO industry is in a unique position in this worldwide recession. In many parts of the world, SEO services are in very high demand, competition is rife and SEO businesses continue to spring up. (Perhaps not at the rate of mushrooms like in the social media industry, but growth remains).

This means that if staff is not happy in their current company, leaving, may still be an option, unlike in many other industries in which people are clinging to their jobs. In SEO the hours are long, the work can be thankless and self-appointed directors, hungry for growth in their personal enterprise can be relentless and unforgiving.

So in an industry in which employees still have options, one could say there is a close correlation between job satisfaction and the decision to leave. It could almost be described as an inversely proportional relationship, in that the lower one’s job satisfaction, the higher the propensity to leave.

Constantly losing employees and gaining new team members is a very high cost activity because the business constantly needs to recruit and then cover the learning, lower productivity and risk costs of the new employees. There is simply no way that a new employee can match the productivity of the existing team and in turn, the new member weighs down on the team because they must teach the new player the ropes.

A Domino Effect
Even though in-house, losing team members has a profound effect on workload and team morale, from a value perspective it is the client who feels the strain of this loss most keenly. If an account manager or first point of contact is leaving the company, this creates a great deal of work and frustration for the client.

With a new account manager a relationship needs to be developed, the project rediscussed in detail and more focus & energy reallocated to something that may have been running smoothly for months.

All those things that just ‘clicked’ and worked with the previous account manager are in the past. In many ways it is like starting from square one with the agency, and for some clients it may be drastic enough to change SEO companies – particularly if things had not been going that well!

Big Shoes to Fill
Sometimes when people leave a company, they also leave big shoes to fill. The first point of contact on any project is the key link between the in-house team and the client.

It is very easy for the director or business development manager to make all kinds of promises to the client, but it is the operational team, who handle the daily ins and outs of the project that will differentiate one agency from another.

The truth is, people expect to be swept off their feet by the business development manager. Through a combination of rapport, client business understanding and a solid business proposal, clients quickly sift through the list to come down to their top picks. The real clincher and indicator of agency professionalism is how the project takes off once the SEO company has taken the client’s money.

You cannot have a solid agency with a well-orchestrated team if it has a staff turnover rate akin to the hospitality industry. It is simply not possible to meet client objectives when those objectives become increasingly diluted via a constant knowledge transferral to new account managers. The client objectives start to sound like a bad game of ‘broken telephone’.

Furthermore, newly appointed account managers may be less experienced and possess a poorer business acumen to correctly interpret your company’s vision and goals. If this is the case or the handover process was not properly implemented, this may create knowledge gaps that will ultimately affect the quality and implementation of the project.

If you are thinking of working with an SEO agency, ask them about their staff turnover rate before considering their services. This may save you hours of frustration and unnecessarily dancing on thin ice as you constantly have to explain company objectives and project goals to new account managers who may just not get it; and fall through the cracks!

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Guarantees in SEO – 100% Hocus Pocus?

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An interesting commenter dialogue discussing ‘SEO guarantees’ took place on my Marketing Pilgrim guest post. An innocent comment supporting the article’s take on the vast array of grandiose guarantees and claims made in the SEO industry, led to a debate on ‘SEO ranking guarantees’ vs. guarantees based on ‘performance based pricing’.

There is a clear difference between the two. This post will shed some light on the straight SEO rankings guarantee that should be avoided at all costs and the pay for performance (PFP) scenario that can actually cushion the risks of SEO.

SEO Ranking Guarantees – The Big No-No!
When making ‘guarantees’ the ultimate business faux pas in ethical SEO is guaranteeing SEO rankings. This is not because 1st page rankings cannot be achieved but rather the back door tactics that are traditionally implemented when making the guarantee statement.

According to the Oxford dictionary, a ‘guarantee’ is:
“a formal promise or assurance, esp. that an obligation will be fulfilled or that something is of a specified quality and durability”

The intrinsic problem with most SEO guarantees made online is that expected ‘quality’ or ‘formal assurance of fulfilling an obligation’ is devoid in these guarantees. There is absolutely no element of customer value because the guarantee is driven by the notion of making an easy buck through the manipulation of the uninformed rather than fulfilling a value proposition.

Let me illustrate. Below is an example of an SEO ranking guarantee:
‘Submit Express will guarantee at least 20 top 10 rankings within 6 months across the major 15 search engines or your money back.’ (source)

What’s wrong with this you ask? 20 top 10 rankings across 15 search engines, that sounds pretty good! That is exactly the problem, it sounds good, but it’s not!

Let’s break up this statement – where are the loopholes?

  • ‘will guarantee at least 20 top 10 rankings’

•    How do you know how valuable or competitive these keywords will be?
•    Are these long tail keywords for which your site may ALREADY rank?
•    How much valuable traffic will these keywords drive to your site?
•    What is the expected ROI on the traffic from these keywords?

  • ‘across the major 15 search engines’

•    First problem – there are ONLY 3 major search engines, they are referred to as the ‘Big 3’ or ‘Tier I’ search engines, they are:
- Google
- Yahoo!
- Bing

4th on the list is Ask.com, this engine actually has its own search engine and feeds other engines. The other search engines such as (AOL.com, iWon.com, EarthLink.com, DogPile.com, MyWay.com etc) feed their search results from the above four engines in some form or other.

For a clearer picture of market share, a July 2009 Hitwise report summarises the current market share picture:
Hitwise U.S. Search Market Share

In other words, In June 2009, Google was utilised for 74.04% searches performed by the sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

The search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com) account for 98.63% of the total searches, leaving all the other search engines with 1.37% share for which to compete!

The final word: The above ‘guarantee’ will rank your site across 15 ‘major’ search engines, 11 of which account for 1.37% search engine market share for keywords whose value impact on ROI are questionable without further information.

For further insight on some of the shady practices used by certain businesses that guarantee rankings, check out this YOUmoz entry.

Guarantees like the one discussed, abound and it is primarily for this reason that reputable SEO firms don’t promise guaranteed search engine rankings.

Pay for Performance Guarantees
Success / performance based pricing or pay for performance (PFP) as this pricing model is often referred to works on the premise that the client will make certain payments based on the rankings / traffic / ROI that has been achieved. The exact model will vary from contract to contract but the premise remains that the client must see real traffic value before making any significant payments.

This model has its benefits for the uncertain client as it provides a safety net and minimises client risk. It is different from the straight ‘SEO ranking guarantee’ because it says: ‘If SEO company achieves X, client pays Y, but if X is not achieved, client does not pay Y.

The focus of the guarantee changes because the SEO provider is no longer guaranteeing SEO rankings (which in effect the SEO company cannot control) but rather guaranteeing its service.

What this says is this: ‘We (SEO company) are confident that you (the client) will be satisfied with our services. We (SEO firm) do not control rankings but we do control our own strategy and we are confident of our abilities. Thus, if we do not achieve the agreed to goals of meeting satisfactory SEO results, you (the client) do not make any payments.’

But what are Satisfactory SEO Results?
We’re back to that hitch! How do you know that the PFP terms & conditions are going to be in your (the client’s) favour? YOU DON’T! It is important to remember that PFP can also be manipulated to the advantage of the SEO firm rather than the client. It is not a panacea to avoiding SEO ranking guarantee scams.

It is for this reason that whatever SEO agreement you sign, you need to be sure that you understand the lingo, jargon, fine print and any other question marks on which you are unclear.

Any reputable SEO firm will explain exactly what the contract states and should, if asked, break down the terminology in such a manner that both parties are completely clear on what the agreement is really saying.

Pay for performance may work for some clients but not every SEO firm will offer these types of agreements. Why? Try saying to your lawyer that you’ll pay them when you’re happy with the level of service they are providing you!

So, stay away from SEO ranking guarantees, consider PFP if that rocks your boat but most of all, do your research, know what you’re signing and don’t be hoodwinked by online scammers!

Surely, if the No.1 Google position for a term like ‘office furniture’ is potentially worth millions of dollars, how on earth can this term be ranked in the top position for a few hundred dollars?

It can’t! Get used to it – reputable SEO is a resource intensive, high value, medium-to-high cost, long term investment! If you want to make millions from your rankings, cough up more than a few hundred bucks to achieve those positions!

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The New Divide: Sales vs. Web Team

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Sales vs. Web TeamThe historic clash between the sales and marketing departments has been well documented. There are proponents on both sides of the fence making their case for the paramount importance of their respective function. Many articles written on this topic try to punch above their weight making grandiose statements such as ‘marketing leads, sales follows’, of course depending on the respective point of view of the author. But that is not what this post is about!

There appears to be a new divide making its appearance in search engine marketing (SEM) agencies. The battleground is in smaller SEM agencies where sales & marketing are more closely married together because employee numbers are lower. The traditional sales & marketing dilemmas are not as profound, given a handful of individuals generally work together and often, the same people perform sales & marketing functions.

So what’s the problem? The divide comes in with the technologically oriented non-customer centric web team vs. the non-tech savvy ‘look at me’ sales team.

That is at least how both sides often perceive one another. The barrier is not created with office space, as many small SEM businesses work in a fairly open-plan environment, but rather deeply entrenched perceptions.

The sales team is frustrated that the web team is not keeping ‘their’ clients happy and that the work was not done YESTERDAY! The web team are often annoyed that the sales guys just don’t ‘GET IT’ – it’s not that easy, it cannot be done immediately and no, it will not be squeezed in today!

Same Team, Different Language
These teams inherently do not speak the same language and they are also driven by different goals. Sales teams have sales targets to meet, these are the people who tangibly bring business through the door. Very often in the sales psyche, the actual sale is the goal and the resultant project to be implemented is a bi-product of the sale. It is no longer the ‘sales person’s problem’.

The web team on the other hand, start their work with the project that comes in. Once the project is allocated to them, they are then informed of the budget available for said project, they have to ascertain the exact scope of the project and the hours that can be allocated to the work. Deadlines and scope creep are management challenges for the web team.

Over Promising, Under Delivering
There are some common scenarios that arise when the web team and the sales team do not work collaboratively. They include:

  • As the sales clincher, client is sold on promises impossible to achieve
  • To meet sales targets, projects beyond company’s resources are taken on
  • Impractical project timeline and delivery dates are communicated to client
  • The project is unprofitable because scope of work was miscalculated
  • Web team does not have a clear idea of client’s requirements
  • From the onset client has unrealistically high expectations that inevitably lead to disappointment

The Consequences
From the above scenarios, there are a number of severe consequences that may occur. Some are fairly obvious. If unprofitable projects are taken on, it is clear that the company will lose money on the job, but there are others that are more insidious.

Should projects beyond the company’s resources be taken on, this has a negative effect on other projects because too many people are put on this one to make sure it is a success. This could result in missed deadlines on other projects and thus unsatisfied clients.

If project delivery dates are provided to clients without consulting the web team, these dates may be a complete fabrication, as they are not founded on fact. The client may ultimately think that deadlines are ‘loose’ and not taken seriously by the company, especially if they have to be changed multiple times.

Without a clear idea of the client’s requirements, information may be misinterpreted, the wrong things worked on and both time & money lost on the project.

Disgruntled clients, phoning to vent their frustration at their original point of contact, i.e.: the sales person, not only has a clearly negative impact on the client relationship but also further affects the sales/web team relationship.

Bridging the Divide
Ultimately, communication is the key.

The sales team and web team need to have open two-way communication from the pre-sale stage right through to project implementation. The sales person should always know the status of every single one of his clients’ projects, even if not directly involved in the project management.

Sales people cannot wash their hands off the project as soon as the sale has been made. Maybe if sales people were more involved with project delivery they would make promises to which they could be held accountable, rather than selling the world.

The web team on the other hand needs to communicate more openly with the sales team. Rather than simply grumbling about ‘bloody sales people’ when unrealistic projects land on their table, the matter needs to be addressed directly. In this way, the sales team will develop a better understanding of what is unrealistic, so that similar blunders can be avoided in the future.

There are no quick fixes, but the first step to sales and web team collaboration is admitting there is a problem.

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SEO Strategies That Will Burn You – Part 2

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In Part 1 we discussed the redundancy of search engine submission and the risk of buying into guaranteed search engine optimization results. This week we are going to focus on a few other SEO strategy warning signs.

3. You’re going to do ALL THAT, for how much?
As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! The same goes for SEO services. If your SEO provider is promising monthly link building, content creation for your website and reporting, all for $100 a month, there a few questions you should ask:

  • So do those monthly services translate to 1 directory link, an automated report and a poorly written, keyword heavy article for my site?
  • What quality of work can be expected and will there be a tangible, quality SEO result from this?
  • $100 a month for 12 months is still $1,200 – is this the best way in which to invest that $1,200?

One of the greatest costs of making a poor SEO decision is opportunity cost, all those other things you could have done such as actually ranking higher in the search engines, instead of losing time, money and patience. Do not make the mistake of selecting SEO according to price. The price you paid for the SEO is the least of your costs.

Have you ever thought to yourself:
I could buy the cheap pair of shoes and replace them in 6-12 months, or I could spend some more money, buy quality and only have to replace them in 2 years.

The same analogy works well for SEO. If you buy cheap SEO, you will be replacing that provider faster than you think, but if you opt for quality, the mutually beneficial relationship can last a good few years!

4. Stay away from the usual suspects in black hat SEO
Finally, don’t get drawn into strategies that could potentially penalise your website. These strategies include:
-    Hidden text
-    Cloaking
-    Keyword stuffing
-    Manipulative linking
-    “Low value” pages

These concepts have been discussed in great detail online, so instead of rehashing what has been said quite eloquently before, here’s a link to Rand Fishkin’s updated section in Rewriting the Beginner’s Guide Part IX: Myths, Penalties & Spam.

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Talking Standards at SEM Scholarship Contest 2009

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This year I have decided to add my voice to the writers who have come before me and put forward a piece in the SEM Scholarship contest which is now in its 4th year!

On Thursday, the first round of entries were posted so the excitement of the competition begins!

My piece, Oh, That’s Right, We Don’t Need SEO Standards focuses on the continued lack of understanding that the ‘general public’ has of SEO. I take some stats from a closed study I did among service professionals to identify where some of the SEO misconceptions lie.

If more industry professionals enter the SEO standards debate, perhaps the industry itself will move forward in setting the benchmark service standards and definitions that we so desperately require.

Jump on, read the article, have your say. Take a moment to peruse the other entries – you may learn something new!

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SEO Strategies That Will Burn You – Part 1

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There are many ways to skin the SEO cat, because there exist a significant number of factors that affect how the SEO strategy will be approached, they include:

•    Competitiveness of the industry in which the given business operates
•    Infrastructure on which the site is built, i.e.: dynamic database vs. static site
•    Trust and authority of the host domain name
•    Level of competition and number of the targeted keywords
•    Client budget that can be allocated to the project

Going DownThe above are a mere snapshot of the factors that need to be taken into account when developing an effective SEO strategy for a client.

There are, however a number of SEO approaches that can could more aptly be called myths or misconceptions rather than strategies. If you are investigating SEO services and are offered any of the following, it is worth thinking about twice, questioning it and even asking the SEO agency to explain the strategy – it would be worthwhile hearing what they have to say.

#1. Search Engine Submission
Quoting Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz: ‘Since 2001-2, search engine submission has not only not been required, but is actually virtually useless.’

The best practice is to earn links from other sites rather than manually submitting URLs. Furthemore, there are really a handful of search engines with which you should be considered, the big three, consisting of Google, Yahoo! and Bing (formerly Microsoft/Live) and perhaps a few others such as Ask.com and certain vertical search engines relevant to your business.

You DO NOT require any type of service offering to submit your site to one let alone THOUSANDS of search engines.

Should you be offered a strategy that includes submission to thousands of search engines and directories, whether this is a free addition to the service or costs you anywhere from $30 per month to $200 per month, this is a waste of your money.

If a submission service offers linking to Free-For-All (FFA) directory pages, this is an even greater warning sign as these pages do not generally pull much weight in search relevancy algorithms. Why? Because they are ‘free for all’, many automated programs fill these pages with links pointing at low quality sites.

Warning signs to look for in regards to search engine submission services:
1. A website with a search engine submission service page is a warning in itself. No high value, reputable SEO business would offer search engine submission services in 2009!

2. Offering to submit your website to 5 search engines is as redundant as submitting it to 75 000*.
(*I found a site actually offering to submit your website to this number of search engines)

3. Stay away from Free-For-All (FFA) directories – in business,  the price of something is directly proportional to its value. Very often this is not even the case, as you may pay a certain price and still be disappointed with the service. But when it is free, the value needs to be evaluated with careful scrutiny.

4. If there is any fee charged for this submission service – run! Imagine, if 1000 people decide that $29.95 for search engine submission is not that bad a price to pay. Why not, if it means getting your site ranked, right?! That makes some business $29950 richer while 1000 business owners have not moved a step closer to ranking well in the search engines.

Not a bad business model and that is why you will still find so many websites on the Internet offering this ‘service’.

2. Guaranteed Page 1 Rankings within a Week
If you see ANY types of guarantees that read like this one, taken from a website offering search engine optimisation services, you should consider these words carefully: ‘We guarantee to have your website listed on Page 1 in Google within seven business days GUARANTEED or you pay nothing!’

1. Your website listed on Page 1 in Google is fairly ambiguous. Will your website be ranked on page 1 for competitive keywords, your business name, your website URL?

Let us look at this within the context of an example. You sell jewellery online and your website is ‘crazyaboutjewellery.com’.

So, if you find in a week that your website is ranking for the phrase ‘Crazy About Jewellery’, this would be related to your business name, rather than any extensive search engine optimisation work that has been done. Every business should rank first and foremost for its business name and if your website URL matches the business name exactly, your top ranking for your business name will be attributed to the strength of your domain name.

In simpler terms, the search engines recognise that the most relevant result for the search phrase ‘Crazy About Jewellery’ must be the website that has the website address: crazyaboutjewellery.com

2. Be absolutely clear about the types of keywords that your website will be ranking for on the first page of Google. Are they going to be competitive, relevant keywords or very long-tail and specific keywords for which your site may have already been ranking, but you simply never thought to check?

For example, to rank for ‘silver earrings’ would require a great deal more work than ranking for ‘49mm sterling silver hoop earrings’ because the first is a much more competitive phrase compared to the latter. Certainly, the latter is very important, because if someone is typing this into the search engine they are much further along the buying cycle, but from an SEO perspective, this would be an easier phrase to rank in the SERPs.

Find out what the fine print is in the agreement. Take the time to learn what ‘Page 1 Google ranking’ really means because from a technical or legal standpoint it could have a number of meanings. So if your website is new and not even indexed by the search engines you may find that on day 1 it does not rank for your business name, but you certainly do not have to pay a cent to find your website on the search engines by day 7. There are free and easy ways of doing this.

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SEO Reporting Warnings

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WarningDoes your SEO agency provide you with quality reporting that assists you in understanding and measuring the success of your online projects?

Every SEO agency should have some type of client reporting, from the standard report that every single client receives, to the more advanced custom reporting to which bigger budget clients will have access.

Clients should not just be grateful that they receive reports, it is the quality of those reports that really matter. More importantly, has your agency been sending you exactly the same report for the last 24 months or has their reporting advanced to a new level in accordance with the maturing of the search industry? What metrics are you receiving? Is it valuable to assist in growing your business or is it simply a throwaway report sent by the agency to cover the ‘reporting’ element of the contract?

Moving Beyond the ‘Ranking / Visibility Report’
Even though a visibility report that highlights a website’s rankings for the tracked keywords in Google, Yahoo! and Bing (formerly MSN / Live Search) does provide a useful snapshot of the rankings at a particular time, this should not constitute the only reporting that a client receives. It indicates where a website is positioned and highlights whether the SEO project is moving forward or lagging, but it does not tell you if that number 2 ranking in the SERPs for a particular keyword is actually driving a positive ROI.

Warning 1: This ranking /visibility report can be manipulated to present misleading data particularly if during the keyword research process very easy-to-rank keywords were selected. This creates a false sense of success because even though a company may rank very well for the chosen keywords, this does not automatically translate to a positive ROI.
All clients should receive a benchmark report for the selected keywords, prior to the launch of the SEO campaign, so that there is a clear distinction between rankings at the start of the project and how things look 6 months into the job.

Analytics Reporting
If you are not receiving any analytics reporting from your SEO agency this is something that should be addressed immediately. If the data is being tracked, you can always ask your agency to share the information with you, but what is even more concerning is the possibility that there may NOT be analytics tracking code inserted on your website. Fixing this is critical. Analytics data that is not being tracked is money being flushed down the loo, it is every piece of actionable data that could have saved you thousands of dollars or gained you more customers.

Google Analytics is free software available to every website owner. Before your website goes live you should have the tracking code string implemented on your site. If your SEO agency does not ensure that you have Google Analytics tracking, at the simplest level of analytics tracking, you have cause to be very concerned. For an excellent guide to how Google Analytics can be used as a powerful tool, visit VKI Studios’ post: The Complete Google Analytics Power User Guide

Warning 2: If your Google Analytics has been implemented and is tracking data but you do not have direct access to this platform, instead receive some variation of weekly /monthly reports, this is a SERIOUS problem, for a few reasons:

1. The real value of Google Analytics is the ability to track metrics over time, create custom benchmark reports and compare relative time periods. If you are receiving a weekly / monthly snapshot of your analytics data in PDF format, you are missing out on the true value of this platform.

2. Any SEO agency / consultant who withholds such valuable information from you may be doing so because ethically they are not very transparent. Furthermore, once you see the valuable analytics data it may reflect the quality gaps in their work.

Measuring the KPIs that matter
As a client you should be receiving insight into as many metrics as possible.
There is no defined set of KPIs that are important, this depends on what the purpose of your website is and what you want users to do on your website, i.e.: how do you qualify a conversion. An e-commerce site will have different KPIs from an information based business website.

Certainly, traffic volume from organic keywords is important because this is the stress test for your visibility report. If your keywords rank highly in the SERPs but do not drive a great deal of organic traffic, this indicates that the keywords recommended during the keyword research phase were not the right keywords for your business.

Other metrics of interest include organic traffic broken down into branded vs. non-branded searches, organic conversion percentage, the amount of time that users are spending on your website, the bounce rate, average order value, revenue per visit etc. The metrics almost never end and for this reason it is important to understand how to segment them, analyse the results and draw conclusions leading to action that will have a positive effect on the bottom line of the client’s business.

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