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Does this unstable economy drive up prices for SEO?

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

It’s a question I’m wondering as I receive more and more calls from various businesses, both small and large, who are suddenly finding themselves in need of some marketing.  People aren’t buying like they have been in years past, and some businesses are smart enough to realize that the future of marketing is on the Internet.

So as I continue to receive these calls, the industries are starting to overlap.  A landscaper calls, a lawn maintenance company calls, a pool builder calls.  While these industries are different in their respective ways, they are also the same.

So it got me wondering – are other SEOs receiving more calls, and if so, are they able to be more picky and/or command a higher price for their services than they were say a year or two ago?

I should preface this by saying that my company personally will not take on more than one client per industry.  If a landscaper hires me, and another calls, I have to turn them down.  The biggest reason is ethical – I can’t get both businesses to rank #1 for competing keywords.  Perhaps other SEOs will take on more than one client per industry, but I don’t see how they could do it and still sleep well at night.

Now, if a landscaper and a lawn maintenance company hire me, they are similar but aren’t really competing over the same rankings, so I wouldn’t have a problem with it.  Even better, they could cross-promote each other and make a bit more money/get more referrals that way.  It’s a win-win.

So back to my question – which I guess is actually two quesitons.

  1. As an SEO, are you finding that you can be more particular about which clients you take on?  Are there more than one business per industry considering your services?
  2. And if so, are you raising your rates because of this demand?  Or, are you finding that there is more competition (since there are more customers) and you are having to lower your prices to stay competitive?

Posted in Marketing, SEO, competition, small business | 1 Response »

Don’t Go to SEO War Unprepared

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

There’s nothing more exciting than landing that first client and jumping right into the link building/onpage SEO immediately. But hold on there, sir knight – you’ve got some work to do before you even think about doing actual SEO stuff. Below is a list of preparations I think you should make before putting any time into link building/onpage changes.

Prepare a baseline

Every SEO campaign must show improvement – whether that means more traffic, more leads or higher rankings. If you don’t get a baseline established from the start, you won’t be able to show improvement over time.

  1. Keyword Research
    Duh.  Know what you’re wanting to rank for before you start making changes.  I’m hoping this was a no-brainer.
  2. Add an analytics program to the website
    Whether Google analytics, AWStats, Webalizer, whatever. Just start getting some numbers on current traffic, keywords etc. Even if there is little or no traffic to the website, establish that up front so that you can show improvement over the months to come.
  3. Identify the competition
    It’s important to establish who the big players are – online and offline – and there is a difference. Some businesses have no clue what SEO is, but they may have a big marketing budget that they waste on billboards, sponsorships, etc. Make sure you identify them, along with any “online only” competition who may be ranking well but perhaps aren’t as widely known.
    Know where these competitors are ranking so you can track their progress (or regress) as your campaign kicks into full swing.
  4. Run a keyword ranking report
    Run a report of all the current ranking positions with at least the top 20 keywords you are preparing to tackle. Even if it’s blank, this will show that when you started, the website did not have any rankings. I run AWR, and use it against the three major SE’s only.
  5. Run the same report for at least two of the competitors you want to beat
    When I recently started an SEO campaign for a real estate client, I first found out who the two “biggest” agents in the area were online, and I ran the same keyword report against their domains.
  6. Make a link baseline
    There are several ways to do this, from programs that will do it for you, to a simple Excel spreadsheet that you make yourself. Find out just how many backlinks your site currently has, and do the same for the competitors you identified above.
  7. Make an index baseline
    Do the same as above but for the amount of pages the search engines currently have indexed for your website.

Wake Up the Spiders

Now that you’ve got your baseline, you’re going to need to get the spiderfood ready.  Since most likely you are going to be dealing with a site that has probably had little or no updates in some time, the bots aren’t exactly knocking down your proverbial website door to get your new content.  Since your client may be on as much as a six week visit cycle, you need to help them realize there is movement in your camp.

  1. Add your website to Google Webmaster Tools
    This simple task can reveal some things that are broken and yet easy to fix on your site.  It will also “tell” the Googlebot that a real person resides behind this domain.
  2. Create a robots.txt file
    You’d be surprised how many websites don’t even have one of these.  Help the bots know what to feed on.  At the same time, make sure you tell the bots what not to feed on. (admin, images, includes folders)
  3. Make an XML sitemap
    You can generate these fairly easily using sites like xml-sitemaps.com.  Download it and put the xml file in your domain’s root folder.  Then make sure you go tell Google Webmaster Tools where it’s at.  You can also add a line to your robots.txt file telling the other search engine bots where to find it.
  4. 404 for the win
    Over the course of the next few weeks, as you start to see stats from the program you installed above, make sure you start to fix any dead links you see.  You should also consider creating a nice looking 404 page that helps the customer find what they may have been looking for.  A page of top-level links would work, or you could even get fancy, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
  5. Decide what URL is best
    Adding a few lines of code to your .htaccess file (what? you don’t have that either?!) can surprisingly help your search engine rankings improve rather quickly.  Decide if you want your site to always show as domain.com or www.domain.com.  I’ve heard theories on both, and personally I always use the www version.

Assuming you follow most of these suggestions, you are now armored and ready to start actually modifying and changing your clients’ website.  Go ye – take thy rankings and climb to victory!

Posted in Marketing, SEO, beginner sem, competition | 2 Responses »

URL Ranking Ethics

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

I stumbled upon this post a few weeks back thanks to a friend and found it quite interesting. I was intrigued, so I tried it out and sure enough, it’s rather easy to rank for someone else’s URL. You’ll probably never get top spot, but I’ve got a few #2’s.

If you read through the post that inspired me, you’ll see that the SEO community is divided about how to handle these types of rankings. Are they ethical? Is it black/gray hat? Or is it just helping out your client in any way possible? Is it “just another keyword” that you and your competition rank for? Or is it hijacking?

I think I’ll continue to do it for my personal sites (affiliate sites, etc), but I’m not real sure if I want to do this for my clients. I’d love to hear what you think.

Posted in competition, domain names, keywords | No Responses »

SEO Seminar Yesterday

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Yesterday was my first seminar of the fall 2008 season.  I may end up doing another, I’m not sure.

I’ve been teaching Internet Marketing now for 4 years. Originally the size of the seminars/class were packed out, but now they are waning.  I was teaching one every month, now it looks like maybe 4 a year.

I think part of the problem is perceived value.  The seminars are free, and therefore not much value is passed on.  I bet if I charged $50 for the seminar, people would be more likely to come.  Problem is, I can’t do that as a library volunteer, since its a library sponsored class.  I’d have to find another venue, which means costs for me.

I received only good feedback from the class, which is always nice, but I often wonder what happens after the people leave the class.  Are they simply overwhelmed by the volume of information they got, and don’t know where to start?  Are they overwhelmed to the point that they just say ‘forget about that’ because its so time-intensive?  Or do they simply file this in the ‘I need to do this stuff’ category, and probably never do.

I was asked about my fees, which are comparable to most local SEO firms, probably a little cheaper.  However, as usual, the fees are received with an “Oh wow” or “Oh my gosh” kind of tone.  This probably goes back to the classes being free.  The people that do show up are not those that are apt to spend a lot on their business marketing.

It’s a bummer, really.  There are so many local businesses that could use SEO to their distinct advantage.  I’m continually very surprised by the lack of big businesses that are doing this, giving small businesses in the area a HUGE opportunity to profit, but they don’t see it.

A local furniture store owner, however, has seen it.  He hired me late in 2006 after attending one of these seminars, and has seen record months for nearly a year now.  Record months, month after month!  They are on track to a record year, and they’ve been in business for over 20 years.  They attribute this to SEO, no bones about it.  They’ve dropped their YellowBook ad size significantly, they’ve added some more ‘hip’ products (like organic mattresses – who knew?) and they’ve ramped up their SEO spending.  They are outranking some big furniture stores in the area, and even nationally.  They’ve started drop-shipping some items because of their sudden national exposure.  All these things have resulted in their best year ever, even with the economy in the dumps!  Why don’t other businesses get it?

I implore everyone who has taken my class to take advantage of the information I’ve given you.  I don’t care if you hire me, but use the techniques I’ve shown you and watch your business grow.  It’s really that easy.

As for upcoming seminars, I will be on an SEO panel for an upcoming blogging convention in St. Louis in September, and I may do another free SEO seminar in October.  It may be my last.

Posted in SEO, St Louis, competition, free stuff, local marketing, seminars, site ranking | No Responses »

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