Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

In an effort to provide clarity between SEOs and their clients, I created a bill of rights for SEO clients. This post covers the bill of rights for the SEOs.

The SEO has a right to…

I.
Receive payment from the client for entire amount contracted.

A contract is a contract. If you change your business model, rethink SEO or decide to invest in other marketing avenues, you still have an obligation to fulfill your end of the SEO agreement. If you really want out, talk to your SEO about a proper buyout of your SEO contract.

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Several years ago I wrote a couple of posts about the billable rights of SEOs and their clients. I revisited these posts recently and thought it was time for an upgrade. Consider this version 2.0!

There can often be confusion between clients and their marketing team as to expectations, due dates, goal measures and even invoicing. While many of these things can be, should be and are handled in the service contract, not everyone reads the fine print.

So here are some basic guidelines to help SEOs and their clients realize what they have a right to in their SEO campaign.

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I often write about the various jobs, skills and talents that go into optimizing a website for search engines. As the owner of a firm that specializes in website marketing strategy and leader of an awesome team of talented people, I’m quite biased as to the need and value of having such a team working on all the aspects of marketing your website.

Yet, optimizing a site isn’t terribly difficult. Anybody can be taught the basics, which many already know and are implementing on their websites right now. But SEO is more than basic implementation of strategies you’ve read about online or on Twitter. SEO is much bigger the sum of its parts.

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When it comes to Web marketing strategies, sometimes it’s difficult to know where to start. A question we hear often is:

Should I start marketing my website with search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC)?

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Sometimes we get to doing something for so long and are so involved in telling people how to do something, that we forget that there are still people who need to be convinced they actually need to do it.

In the last few years social media has jumped to the forefront of online marketing for many small businesses. Some business owners aren’t even bothering to market (or in some cases even build) their websites anymore.

They can just create a Facebook page.

Or a blog on Blogger.com

Or tweet on Twitter.

Or build a Google Places page.

Are we entering an age where SEO just doesn’t matter?

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Question: Is SEO a long-term process or can there be a quick fix solution?

Before all you SEOs raise your hand with the answer, lets take a minute to analyze the basis of the question for all the small business owners out there.

A lot of businesses are looking for ways to grow their companies without increasing long-term costs. They want profits, and in order to be (and remain) profitable, they have to keep expenses down to a minimum as much as possible. After all, the more you spend, the less profits you have in your pocket, right?

This is an unfortunate mindset when it comes to SEO and SEM. Instead of looking at them as an investment that will grow their businesses, owners hope that both SEO and SEM can provide quick-fix solutions that will bring an influx of new customers and soaring profits. And somehow, magically, that influx is expected to stay strong, even without any ongoing marketing efforts.

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Cost is not important.

Let me repeat that: Cost is not important.

What is important is ROI (Return on Investment).

When spending any money on a marketing campaign, you should consider the following:

1. How much money you can you afford to spend?
2. How soon will you see the return from that money?
3. How much will that return be?

If you can spend the money (1), not go broke while you’re waiting for the return (2) and the result will be enough of a profit to make it worthwhile (3) then the cost of the campaign is not important.

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Crafting the Story, Part 2

In the last post, we started crafting our story by looking at some basic writing and optimization necessities. As we finish up this section, we’ll look more at the content itself and how you can improve it for a better searcher and reader experience.

Keyword Integration

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When taking your public relations strategy online, there are some similarities to the “traditional” way of doing things, but there are also a lot of differences. Going online opens up a whole new world of opportunities that, if leveraged properly, can make your PR campaign far more successful than the old-school ways of doing things.

So far in this series we’ve looked at why online readers are different from offline readers, clarified the goals of online PR, and then dived into the background research needed to craft a good story. The following two posts will focus on developing your story in a way to maximize your reach through search and social. Click here to keep learning

In the first two parts of this series, we looked first at how the online audience differs from the traditional off-line audience. There are several distinct characteristics one has to take into account before pushing content out onto the web that was designed for print.

Next, we looked at the goals of online PR in order to identify key things that online PR must do that are both similar and different from offline PR. Good writing is still good writing, whether you are on- or offline, but when writing online content, you have to treat each piece a bit differently.

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