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.

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.

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?

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? (more…)

The New York Times has an interesting article on girls and the Internet.  The article states that a recent Pew study found that more girls ages 13-22 are creating online content than boys.

If you’ve got a product that targets the female demo from 13-22, you’ve got an audience just waiting to tell the world about your product.

Being the father of a 13 year old girl with a blog, let me tell you something.  There is nothing she would like more than to receive a free girl related widget in the mail.  She’d tell all her friends, and of course blog about it on her site.  The small cost and time it’d take for the widget manufacturer to search these girls out could hugely compensate for the reviews they’d get in return.

Heck, a smart company could even go a step further and give the girls an affiliate ID of sorts.  Tell them when they show their friends that they should use this ’special URL’ which will pay them $x per sale.  Now there are probably some legal issues there, but I’m still betting a smart company could figure something out.  ‘Pay’ them in iTunes coupons or something…

So what ideas can you come up with to get these active girls on your side?

I’ve got a client in the furniture and mattress industry who is very gung-ho about SEO. The money that they’ve put into their website and SEO-related investments are paying off nicely. This weekend is a big furniture expo in Tupelo, MS. The client is heading down on Saturday afternoon and coming back Sunday.

Not much time for checking things out.

But his mention of the conference brought up a few great ideas that I think can catapult his website to an entire different level, if only he had more time. So next year, I told him to invite me along, and let’s plan on spending a full two days or so there. Here’s what we’ll do:

1. Take along a video camera. We will shoot everything from walking in from the parking lot to our walk around the convention itself. That video will go on YouTube with the appropriate tags. Then we’ll post a link to it on the client’s website.
2. We’ll set up interviews (just short 5 minute ones) with various vendors. We’ll ask them about their new products, ask them why they think they are the best, etc. These interviews will each be posted separately and will have their own ‘content page’ on said clients site, complete with interviewee’s and manuf/vendors name. We’ll use it to rank for local terms and vendors names that we don’t even sell.
3. For vendors of products that the client currently sells, we’ll videotape someone ‘testing out’ the mattress or bed, and then we’ll ask them what they thought. The good responses will go on the website as additional fodder for that particular product.
4. We’ll hand out tons of business cards for my client. You’d be surprised how many people we’ll meet that will check out his website a few days later, and will be highly impressed at the work he’s doing. Some of them will call my client, and he’ll gladly refer them to me. Bonus.
5. There are bloggers at every convention.  Scope them out and get a quick interview if possible.  Tell them you’ll have a full write-up of the days events on your clients’ site.  Hand them a card. They’ll link to your stuff.  Yummy industry-related links!
6. Speaking of write-ups, we’ll do one for each major ‘event’ that takes place at the convention.  If there are special seminars on certain items, we’ll attend the ones we can and do a summary of what happened.  Naturally those things will become linkbait, or sorts, for other Internet-savvy people that were at (or wanted to attend but couldn’t) said convention.

The next time you talk to your SEO clients, ask them about industry-related conventions. Go to it with the thought of promoting their business as well as gaining tons of free content that is available. Since 85% (I’m guessing here) or more of the vendors at conventions aren’t focusing on SEO (they’re hoping to sell their widget), they’ll be more than happy to spew on and on about it. Get it on tape and let them spew.

There’s big money in those conventions. Even while you’re there promoting your client, people will ask you who you are. “I’m Will Hanke, an Internet marketer. I’m here with John Doe and am helping him promote his widget store”. You’ll be handing out cards too, I promise.

I’ve got a teenager, now 15, who’s one main chore in the house is to keep the dishes clean. He’s quite bad at it, to the point where the sink seems perpetually full.

It’s not really that he’s bad at it, but rather that he can’t seem to focus on his task at hand. It may take him an hour or two to get the dishes going (in a dishwasher, nonetheless!) because he is constantly distracted by the funny TV show or the dog that’s wanting some attention. And during that time gap from start to finish, you can hear me say several times “Focus son, focus.”

And so here I am in the same position, working on a new SEO account. Yet I find myself being distracted away from the ‘dishes’ to other seemingly important things.

Check email (even though I just did three minutes ago). Oh yeah, that client needs that change. Better do it now. No, wait. FOCUS.

Phone ringing. Friends on IM. New RSS feeds coming in from blogs I read. Must… stay.. focused.

Unlike the new digital camera I bought, my life doesn’t run on AutoFocus.  Which really sucks

If you’re a budding SEO consultant, I think the number one thing I can tell you to do when you sign a client is to block out a chunk of time, turn off all distractions, and focus. Put your head into it, think like the client’s customer, and start kickin’ ass.

A client recently pointed me over to Website Grader’s podcast area, so I took a listen to the SEO 101 podcast.  I was particularly interested in hearing what they had to say about hiring an SEO.

Mike Volpe went over things such as what qualifications an SEO should have, what they should charge, what they should and shouldn’t do, and what they should wear.  Ok maybe not the last one.

Two particular things stuck out to me as wrong, and maybe its just me.  I’m going to cover one now and another in a few days.

Mike said: “You should also make sure that their own website is optimized…”

He went on to add, “I would ask them what their URL is, I would take that URL and plug it into website grader, and run the report.  And if they don’t get at least an 80 or 85, at least that, then you know what, they really don’t know what they’re doing - or they just haven’t decided that its important enough for them to optimize their own site… And if they aren’t one to keep their own house in order, I just wouldn’t bother to engage them…”

Well, I couldn’t disagree more.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if 80-90 percent of the “good” SEO’s out there couldn’t even be found online without a bit of work.

Why?

Well, first lets back up.  I’ve only been doing SEO going on three years, so I’m no veteran.  I will say, though, that some of the men and women in the industry that I’ve met have a very basic website and sometimes a blog.  They don’t tout their skills online because they don’t have to. Personally I’ve been doing it for a few years now and this is my real first attempt at really promoting my SEO skills online (and even then, this website is also to help my current clients to learn things about SEO, not just 100% self-promotion).

A good SEO is busy. And by busy I mean busy.  Too busy to worry about optimizing their piddly little website that isn’t bringing in many new customers.

You see, anyone willing to spend $2000+  per month isn’t going to make that spending decision by reading website copy.  They are going to want to get references, talk to the person and get that ‘feel good’ feeling about the person.  Whether or not their website ranks for (whatever) is not in their realm of thinking.  They are concerned with results.  And results are where it’s really at.

Instead of worrying about the SEO’s ranking, customers should focus on what that SEO is doing for his/her customers.  Ask for phone numbers to their customers (if they can share them).  Talk to their clients and ask about their results and their rankings.  That’s where the meat is. Ask about increased revenue, sales, and leads.  Are they producing or just taking their money?

Now for years when I didn’t understand SEO, I always thought that a good SEO company would rank for ‘SEO’ or related terms.  But now I have changed my thinking.

I think most of the good SEO’s are invisible.  And they can be, because they’re kickin’ ass and growing businesses.