February, 2008

...now browsing by month

 

Don’t Always Wear the Blue Suit

Friday, February 29th, 2008

I’m reading one of the most popular Business books ever written, the E-Myth Revisited.  In the book, author Michael Gerber discusses doing a sales test.  The test is simple:

For two weeks, wear a brown suit, brown tie and nice brown shoes.  Track the people that come into your establishment, your sales, and your overall profits for the period.

Then, for the next two weeks, wear a blue suit, light blue shirt and polished black/matching shoes.

Gerber insists that you will sell 10-16% more items while wearing the blue suit.  “So why not always wear the blue suit?” he asks.

The blue suit is the symbol of a increased profits.  But here’s where I think this test goes bad.  He simply concludes the experiment by suggesting that the blue suit should be on your everyday list of things to wear.

Ah, but you could be missing out on the real top-seller – the black suit.

What happens if  by wearing a black suit, your profits go up 20%?  If you never wear a black suit, you’ll never know.

A good SEO never stops testing.  Testing is imperative to fine-tuning results and increasing leads and sales.  Sometimes testing produces bad results, sometimes testing produces good.  But if you’re stagnant and not testing, you’re stuck in a rut.  You’ll never know if you could increase your sales by another 2 or 3 percent by changing to a black suit unless you try.

Get out there and test.  Measure results accurately, and modify your behavior accordingly. Don’t always wear the blue suit.

Posted in SEO, lemmings | 1 Response »

Are All Good SEOs Outrageously Expensive?

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

This post is the part two followup to The Invisible SEO.

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while, and finally have a few minutes to post my thoughts on the ever-rising cost of SEO.

Diane Aull did a great piece yesterday over on SearchEngineGuide called “Why do the (good) SEOs cost so %&*# much? She had a good story about a maintenance man that knew just what to do, and where.  It’s a good read.

Now, as I mentioned last week, I listened to the SEO 101 webinar from HubSpot, and in particular I wanted to hear what the guy had to say about finding a good SEO.  I’ve already complained about him saying a good SEO should rank, so its time for me to bitch about the other thing I didn’t agree with him about – price.

Mike says: “Any good SEO that is worth their salt, the majority of them are going to be more than $2000 a month.”  He goes on to add, “and anyone who’s only a couple hundred dollars a month… doesn’t provide a good value for the money”.

Wrong!

While I agree, $2000 a month is probably a good number for decent sized small businesses, it’s not fair to use it as a generic baseline.  There are many factors involved in each business that determines this amount.

SEOMoz said they won’t take a client for less than $10k a month.  They have a great staff that can handle large accounts, and can dedicate staff to each project to make sure their clients get the value they are paying for.

Not-so-prominent SEOs such as myself don’t (or can’t) hold themselves to such standards, and still be able to eat each night.  While sure, I’d love to get me a few $10k accounts, I must continue to live in the real world.  And my world is full of small business with small budgets that want to grow.  And I’m just the guy to help them do it.

I have a small business client who I just took on recently who rents out those cool bounce houses that every 35 year old wishes existed twenty years ago (where were they!?).  This client doesn’t have a big budget. And to add to that, she has a short window of time when these things can even be rented out (who wants to bounce while it’s snowing? Not me.). So its fair to say she’s not going to spend $2000 a month right away on SEO. And that’s ok with me.

So for a few months we’ll do what she can afford, and we’ll reassess the situation then.  Spring will be chugging along, and (if I’m doing my job) her business will be well. Perfect. Now she has the opportunity to adjust her budget and do a full-court press the rest of the summer. We both win.

I end up with a client that is spending a nice amount of money for my services, and her business is growing (and ranking).  Had a told her upfront that there was a $2000 entry fee, I’d have never made a dime.

Now, I should also mention that I am selective about the clients I take on.  Some clients just want it all, and they want it all for under $500 bucks.

It ain’t happenin’.

I’ve got ‘buddies’ who are willing to put up with these types of clients, so I’ll just pass them on.  Headache avoided, friends fed.

But $2000 or they are “worthless SEOs”? I don’t agree.

Posted in SEO, money, small business | 1 Response »

Who’s Googling You?

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

If you own a small business, chances are people are not only searching for your business by name, they may also be researching you. I’ve had this happen a few times lately.

Since many of my SEO gigs are by word of mouth referral, most people have no idea initially who I am. So some go online and do a search. I only have good things showing up in the first few pages of results. Luckily for me, I haven’t pissed off too many clients.

Or have I?

There’s a new thing now that some SEOs are offering – reputation management. It is just what it sounds like. If you’ve made some clients mad or had a bad experience, and the person happens to be Internet savvy, they could trash your reputation pretty easily. They could easily rank those mean reviews for your name – thus scaring away potential clients.

A well written and scathing review or website can dramatically hurt a business or business owner financially. Keeping those reviews ‘in check’ by searching out your name every once in a while isn’t a bad idea. If you do start to see bad things, you should definitely consider hiring a firm that specializes in fixing these problems, or by subscribing to a few websites that can help you track some of it yourself. Here are a couple:

  • Ziggs.com is a professional networking site where you can set up alerts in your profile to let you know who is looking at your profile.
  • Naymz.com – a “reputation community” will let you know who’s looking at your profile, and even keeps ’score’ of their communities best and worst.
  • Linked In – the most popular of the self-promotion websites. LinkedIn will give you hints about who’s checking out your profile as well, and if you pay, they’ll even tell you exactly who it was doing the ‘checking out’.

For my not-so-Internet-savvy clients – try these different searches

  • First Last
    This will be the most common way people search for you
  • “First Last”
    Putting the quotes around your name will force the search engine to look for that exact phrase, instead of just those two words somewhere on the result page.
  • “First Last” -keyword
    If you have a more common name, you may need to pare the results down a bit. You can do that by putting a minus in front of common words that show up for other people with your name.
    Example: “Will Hanke” -doctor
    Example: “Will Hanke” -pastor -Minnesota
  • “First Last” +keyword
    Along the same lines, you can find websites that mention you by using keywords that describe yourself. You can also mix the plus and minus signs to tweak your search even further.
    Example: “Will Hanke” +hosting
    Example: “Will Hanke” +hosting +Missouri -doctor

You can of course use these same searches for your business name. If its a more common name, you may need to delimit a few cities to find out just what people are saying about your business.

Lastly, I highly suggest you set up a few Google Alerts that can let you know when something new has been indexed by Google that may be interesting to you. Use the above searches (whichever one you found produces the best results about you).

Now every time Google indexes something that matches your search query, they’ll email you with a link to the website containing the mention. What more could you ask for?

Posted in Marketing, online reputation, small business | 1 Response »

Should You Require a Non-Compete from Your SEO?

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

For the first time ever, last week I had a potential client ask me if I currently did work for any of her competitors. It was a question I’ve long anticipated but never expected.

Her question was just the right question to ask me prior to signing on the dotted line. But did she go far enough? Is a simple “no” from me (or your SEO of choice) enough to settle your nervousness about hiring an SEO? Click to continue »

Posted in Marketing, SEO, competition, small business | 3 Responses »

« Older Entries