So it’s no secret that the world of SEO is we know it is changing, thanks to Google Universal. We now see images, local results (A,B &  C) at the top, and videos now being included in the traditional SERPS. As a user, it’s much better to see these kinds of things being included in the search. For many SEO’s, it can be scary to see the “world as we know it” changing. Good SEO’s will take advantage of the change and adapt to the change in the search landscape. Four days ago, I filmed a short video promoting my company’s services and uploaded it to iFilm. There are other video sharing sites that are worthwhile, but I chose iFilm because it has favor with Google and it provides a direct link back to my site. I titled the video “San Diego SEO company“. Now, four days later, that video comes up #2 on Google for “San Diego SEO company”. Four days. Try it out yourself and see how it works out. Now, I don’t expect that rank to stick unless I build links to that page on iFilm but this is just a test. Once the rank goes down, I’ll test again with a different video and see if I can get the videos to hold their rankings with a link building campaign.

There’s been a few posts by other SEO’s about how to get your site out of the Supplemental index. Andy Hagan’s has a good post on how to get out of the supplementals where he lists 5 steps (unique title tags, unique meta descriptions, plenty of unique content, get more trusted links, and get links to the internal pages).  The most tedious part of course is usually getting inbound links to those internal pages.  For smaller sites,  you can actually get yourself out of the supplemental index just by having a better site navigation that allows the spiders to crawl to those pages and without having to spend a bunch of time link building. Most times the pages that are sent to supplemental hell are pages that don’t have enough links to them or are duplicate content pages. If the pages that are supplemental are some of the more important pages in the site, you may want to use sitewide links in the footer of the site. This will of course provide more links to those pages (yes, your own site links count) and also tell the search engine which are the most important pages of your site. If you have a larger site, obviously you can’t do this but you can create multiple site map pages to provide additional links to those pages. As long as your site is being crawled on a regular basis (you do have to have some good inbound links to your site) then eventually you will get those pages out of the supplemental index.

Has anyone ever tried to change their listing in the Yahoo directory? The team there is about as responsive as DMOZ editors. I’ve tried numerous times the past couple of years to try and modify listings without success or even a response.  The biggest reason I’ve tried to change listing information is because they use the information they have in their directory about your site in place of any title tags are meta description tags in your site when showing results for any search. The Yahoo blog posted yesterday and talked about supporting the NOYDIR tag. Now finally you can use one of these tags to ensure they don’t use the Yahoo directory information:

 <META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOYDIR”>

or

<META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOYDIR">

One of the most important things you can do in any business is to properly set up expectations for your clients. It’s especially true when it comes to search engine optimization. Most people outside of the Internet marketing world have no clue as to how the search engines organize their results (hell, even many Internet marketers don’t truly understand SEO).  If you want to keep your clients happy, it’s extremely important to inform your clients of the process of SEO and to explain that the optimization process takes time. My personal rule with my clients is to overestimate  the time I think it will take to start seeing results. It’s always been my golden rule in business.  Underpromise and overdeliver. Why? Most people (in any business) do the EXACT OPPOSITE just to get a sale.  It’s truly refreshing to do business with someone who actually overdelivers on his promises. I’m even happy when they tell me 45 minutes for a table and I get seated in 25 at a restaurant. Now if someone tells me 45 minutes and I’m waiting 1:30, I’m pissed. Same thing when it comes to your clients. You don’t want them pissed from the start or they will probably be all over your ass. Having an “underpromise/overdeliver”  philosophy helps in a few ways:

1. If you can beat your time estimate for results, you look really good with your client. For example if you tell your client it’s going to take 3 months before they start to see sales occur as a result of your SEO work, and they start seeing results in month 2…..they love you.

2. It buys you more time if you aren’t seeing results yet. Let’s say competition is a little tougher than you first anticipated, and you aren’t yet moving up on the SERPS like you thought you would. Overestimating the time you thought it would take to start seeing results has now given you more time to move their site up.

3. Referral business will increase. Once your clients start to see results in a shorter time period than they originally anticipated, they will tell others about you I promise. Good businesses are hard to come by and people realize this so when they find someone that delivers results, they tell their friends about it.

Keep in mind, the most important element in any SEO compaign is not rankings but ROI.  All clients want to know how much business they will get as a result of your SEO campaign and of course that’s always difficult to anticipate. Underpromising and overdelivering also applies to the estimated return that your clients will get. In any business, it’s a rule to live by.

Good to see Dave Pasternack working so hard to to link build. Jim Boykin, if you’re looking for a new, incredibly hard working link ninja, Dave may be your guy. Hey, you have to give him some credit…he is up to # 2 in the Google rankings. He really wants that $1,000 dollars.

Update: The DP bio page has now fallen to # 7

He’s added a nice footer link on the Did-it site, and as Greywolf pointed out  , Dave Pasternack has been spamming MyBloglog (Dave…have you been watching those incredibly educational Gary Ruplinger videos?). He’s also been all over the SEO blogosphere leaving comments on people like Oilman’s Dave Pasternack page and even no name bloggers like myself. I didn’t see anything over at the Dave Pasternack page at Threadwatch.

I will give him some props though. He’s taking advantage of the whole situation. He’s even created some pretty funny mugs, t-shirts, etc to sell over at Cafepress. I really do hope you sell some of those things. Here’s some ideas though to increase your sales at cafe press.

1. Add an apron to the list of your products (you know…in case your baking a cake or something)

2. Offer the same items but without your face on them (they’re much more attactive without your mug on a mug)

3. Add some “SEO is not rocketscience” toilet paper.

 Continued success with the link building. You’re doing a great job! 

Mark Simon over at MediaPost writes today on the Search Insider “The Search Engines are Killing SEO”.  He states:

“As search engines get smarter, SEO firms have a harder time providing real value.”

He also says:

“The endgame for all of this is a world in which SEO doesn’t matter. The engines won’t need you to tell them how relevant your page actually is, because they’ll understand on their own. For the same reason, they won’t listen if you lie to them about a page’s true value. Search results may never be unmanipulatable, but they’ll be nearly so, to the point that it doesn’t make business sense to try. “

 And last but not least:

“But as I’ve already highlighted, the engines have smartened up to a wide array of spamming tactics.

Yes, search engines algorithms are getting more sophisticated all the time. What I don’t agree with his comment that the “endgame” is that “SEO doesn’t matter”. That couldn’t be further from the truth. No matter what people like Simon, his boss Pasternack, or Jason Calacanis say, there will always be a demand for SEO. Here’s why:

1. Businesses will always compete with each other.

Companies that want to grow their business understand the importance of being on the 1st page of Google, Yahoo and even MSN. Even more important is being in the top 5 (Danny has a great post on his review of the recent study by MSN. )  Guess what? Only 10 web pages can show up in the top 10. Know what else? Only 5 pages can be listed in the top 5! Wow! Startling revelation right? Good thing I kept that calculator from statistics class in college. The best results usually come from being listed near the top and anyone that has optimized sites for a living understands that the sites with the best content don’t always show up at the top. It’s the uneducated like Dave Pasternack and Jason Calacanis (SEO-wise undeducated) who make rediculous comments like they’ve been making of late. But hey, they may be playing the link baiting game right? For example, the Pasternack bio page (even with the Pasternack SEO contest)  is now # 2 on Google because of the influx of links he acquired after his moronic rant. The bottom line is that competition drives business. Businesses hire SEO companies because they want to grow their revenue by appearing higher in the search engines then their competitors. As long as businesses compete with each other, there will always be a demand for SEO.

2.  Search engine algorithms will always need to rely on inbound links.

Yes, algorithms improve regularly but perfect result query sets will never exist.  Simon says in his post, “But as I’ve already highlighted, the engines have smartened up to a wide array of spamming tactics.” I just have to laugh that they think SEO is all about “spamming tactics”.  There will always be some form of search engine spamming tactics, but MOST have become and will become less effective each time the search engines improve their algorithm. Search engines however have to rely on links to help in determining relevent results. There are some sites out there that don’t need SEO work because they get links naturally (Wikipedia for example) but those sites are rare. Building relevant inbound links are part of the process of SEO and are always a factor with sites showing up at the top of the search engine rankings.  Businesses need people like link Moses and Andy Hagans. Now matter how evolved the search engines get, they will always need to rely on inbound links.

So what does this all mean? I think that as search engine algorithms evolve, this will weed out the bad SEO’s, and weak black hats while at the same time making it easier for those SEO’s who are successful at their trade. Sorry all you haters,  SEO is here to stay.

This is part two of How to Sell SEO Services.  In part one we talked about:

1. Targeting the right clients.

2. Finding out who the decision maker is.

3. Setting up the appointment

So really you’ve done the hardest part. Nobody likes setting up appointments. For me, it’s making the sales call that’s the fun part. 

4. Pre-call planning:

Before you go on your call, you need to make sure you do your homework and find out as much information as you possibly can about the person you’re meeting with, their business and of course their website.

5. The appointment:

Dress nicely. This doesn’t mean you have to wear a suit and tie but look professional. Deoderant would be nice don’t you think?. And no one likes talking to someone whose breath is kickin’ like karate. Go to town on some Altoids or gum. So you’re in the lobby waiting for them to come out. Now it’s your time to shine.

A. Meet and thank them for taking the time to meet with you. Make sure you have Internet access for the appointment, you’ll need it. If you don’t have a laptop with Internet then meet them in their office where they have a computer with access to the Internet. MAKE SURE to meet only in a place where you have Internet access.

B. Set the agenda. Why are you there? You’re there to find out more about their company, their business goals, their Internet marketing objectives. After finding out that info you’d like to show them how you can help them achieve those goals and then show them how you’ve helped other businesses to grow company sales.

C. Conduct the Interview. Want to know what the great salespeople do better than anyone else? They listen. They get the other person to talk. In order to get the other person to talk you need to ask good questions that get the other person to “open up”.  Be prepared with plenty of questions. You’ll want to take notes on the call so feel free to write down a bunch of these questions on your note pad prior to the call. Here’s the most important part (and where many sales calls go wrong): Listen when they talk. Sounds stupid….but the truth is most people are too busy thinking about their next question to ask instead of listening to what they have to say. Getting them to open up will also let them feel they their in control. One of the most important questions you can ask is what an average sale or new client is worth to them. For example, if you’re meeting with a law firm, ask how much on average is a new client worth to them. Suppose they say $3,000-5,000 on average, this will be important to know when it comes time to close the sale. Again, make sure to take notes.

D. Show them how you can help them meet their needs. If you were listening, you’ll know what their goals are. Now, show them how you can help them meet those needs. Jump on the Internet (if you’re in their office, ask them to “let you drive”.) You need to be in control. Now jump on the Internet and conduct some searches for the types of searches they want to come up for. Explain why the sites that are ranking for those search terms are ranking on the top of the search engines. This is your chance to show them your expertise on SEO. Now, this is one of the most important parts of the sales call. In order to gain their trust, you need to show them what you’ve done for other clients.  Showcase some searches where your clients are # 1 (or at least on the 1st page) on Google for targeted search terms. Share their success stories and how you’ve helped these other companies to succeed with their Internet marketing plan. If you don’t have any success stories to share you don’t belong there in the first place. If possible, show off some web stats and how people are finding other sites you’ve worked on. This can be pretty damn impactful for clients that have never had web analytics on their sites before. By showing them how you’ve helped others out this should get them excited to work with you.

E. The Close. At this point, if you’ve done a good job of understanding their needs and showing them how you can help them, they will want to know how much your services are. In almost every case for me, I have to set another appointment to go over costs.  I explain that I need to use my keyword research tools, study competition, estimate hours, etc. in order to come up with a price quote.  Don’t leave without setting up another appointment to go over costs. These price quotes are best handled in person. Remember when I said it was important to find out what a sale or a new client is worth? This is where justification of costs come in to place. Take the example of the law firm for example. If you can help them pick up 4 new clients a month (remember their average was $3-5k a month per client) then they should have no problem spending $2-3 a month for a localized SEO campaign.  As a marketer, I’ve always thought that a 5-1 return on my marketing budget was a good number.  In this example, spending $2k-$3k with a goal of $12-20k exceeds that number. Bottom line is if you spell out your costs this way then you have a much greater chance of turning that call into a new client. You should never have to hard sell anyone. If you’ve made a strong case for why they should work for you it should be a natural decision for them to make. With me, it always comes down to budget. There are going to be clients that can’t afford to work with you and that’s ok. Sometimes you just need to walk away in those instances.

 Happy selling. 

Before starting my own SEO company I worked in the corporate world. Being an entrepreneur at heart, I worked in the corporate world only for the training and experience that working for larger companies can provide. I was a highly successful salesperson and had even worked on the side as a sales trainer for small to medium sized businesses. The money was incredible at times (I once received a $200,000+  commission check for one month of work) but no matter how much success I had I didn’t want to work for other people anymore. Nothing beats working for yourself.  Unless you can’t make enough money to pay the bills and your forced to be a man whore  (or just a regular whore…I’m not sexist)  just to make ends meet.  Lucky for me I’ve never had to deal with that.  Sales have always come natural to me. Of course, there are plenty of great SEO’s that don’t need to sell their services because they have a great reputation. I’m sure Aaron, Todd, Rand and other high profile SEO’s can pick and choose their clients without ever having to make a single sales call. The reality is that if you do  good work, you will get plenty of referrals and/or your existing clients will increase their spend with you. I’ve only been in busines for a year and a half and I no longer have to make sales calls because of the amount of referrals I get. If you are in the position that you are looking to grow your business, then like it or not (I know many of you hate the sales thing) you are a sales person. You have to be one at some point if you have your own business. This post is aimed at helping the SEO’s who target small to medium sized businesses.

 1. Target the right clients

Whether in the corporate world, or in the beginning stages of my company, I always carefully select who I’m targeting as a prospective client. Most importantly, they need to have the money to pay for my services. There are many ways to find out which businesses will spend money on advertising. TV advertisers, radio advertisers, Yellow Page advertisers, etc. One example would be to look at your local Yellow Pages and find those companies who do full page ads. Those advertisers may be ripe for the picking considering the use of Yellow Pages has steadily decreased while Internet usage continues to grow. Many Yellow Page advertisers have seen a decline in sales over the past few years.

Also, make sure that you can actually help their business. There’s nothing worse than somebody trying to sell something to someone that doesn’t need it. Ever heard someone referred to as someone that “could sell ice to an eskimo“? I’ve always hated those sales people. DON’T SELL SOMETHING TO SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T NEED YOUR SERVICES. It’s called need based selling. Only sell something if it’s needed by your prospective client. Also, don’t offer SEO services if you can’t do the job. There’s nothing worse than someone who over-promises and under-delivers. There’s enough bad so called “SEO’s” out there that give the good ones a bad name. Or even clueless morons who trash what we do.

2. Find out who the “decision maker” is.

The decision maker is not the receptionist. It’s not an assistant. It’s not the administrator. You want to speak to the owner, president, Director of Marketing,… someone like that. Do research online or just call and find out who makes the marketing decisions. In small companies it’s almost always the owner.

3. Set up the appointment.

 You have a few options here:

A. Stop in
B. Call
C. Email
D. Write a letter

If you stop in: Make sure you bring something in with you. Do something different that other sales people don’t do!  Otherwise your just another sales person and most receptionists or “gate keepers” are trained to dispose of sales people. Drop off a simple web analysis report for them (speak to them in normal human speak, not SEO talk. Most people don’t know what an ALT tag or even what link popularity is). SPEAK TO THEM IN THEIR LANGUAGE!! Or print out some Google searches that show the top 10 results for a term you know they want. Business owners hate seeing their competition ahead of them! If you are just stopping in, don’t expect to see the owner but be prepared if you do.

If you call: In almost every business, the receptionist will answer so be prepared. Write a little script if you have to. Be clear about why you’re calling.  You’re an Internet marketing consultant who works to help small businesses to improve their visibility on the Internet. Their website can’t be found by those consumers looking for (example) “a girls boarding school.” You noticed that their website is missing many of the things that Google requires in order to rank on the 1st page of Google and you’d like to schedule an appointment with Mr. X to show him how you can help their company be found. “Did you know that over 1,000 searches a month are done for people looking for a school like yours?”.

If you email: Make sure you title the email “Name - Meeting Request” (or something similar to get thier attention). Many of these will never be read because of spam blockers and other reasons but use the same basic info from the phone call but with more detail.  Make sure you provide some examples of your work. At the end of the message, ask what time works best for them?

Send a letter: If you do send a letter, again, use the same basic content in the letter as the email. Use a hand written manilla envelope. Not the regular postate sized envelope but the kind that you can stuff an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet without having to fold. They are much more likely to open this than some envelope that looks like everything else they receive that goes straight to trash can. At the end of this message, let them know you will be calling to set up an apointment at X:XX am/pm. Use an irregular time like 9:13am or 3:28pm.  Make sure you call them EXACTLY when you said you would. THIS MAY BE THE MOST EFFECTIVE METHOD OF ALL (especially if you’re not good on the phones).

 One of the most important rules in sales is you cannot sell anything to anyone unless that person realizes they have a need. What’s the most important thing to any business? Sales! Sales are the life blood of any organization. There are some businesses that can’t take any more business but those are far and few between. Make sure you make it clear to them how you can help them grow their business. Give examples of other businesses you’ve helped. Success stories are always a plus.

 Follow these steps and this will help you set up the appointment.  On my next post I’ll be talking about what to do on the appointment.

 So those who have used Wikipedia in the past to build links will be dissapointed to learn that they will now us using the “nofollow” tag on outbound links.  To quote the people over at Wikipedia: 

“At Jimbo Wales’ directive, all external links within the English language Wikipedia are now coded “nofollow” — this should help cut spamming immensely once word gets out in the SEO community.”

Wikipedia was one of the sites where you could get a high quality inbound link by contributing good content. I’ve used it to build links before (legitimately). However, I think we’ve all seen people abuse the system which is why Wikipedia is making the move to the “nofolllow” tag.  Bottom line is that those outbound links will no longer pass any “link juice” to the sites they’re linking to. Of course, certain pages of Wikipedia are so heavily trafficked  that it’s still worth it to get a link just for the traffic alone. Seems to me that Wikipedia is getting stronger all the time. In many occasions, there is no way they should be ranked as high as they are (for example “search engine optimization” shows Wikipedia ranked # 1 on Google??? C’mon).  With this move, their site will get even more powerful as their PR will all be passed internally.

The move to nofollow will not eliminate link spam. Has it really reduced the amount of link spam you see on your blogs? No. Not really.  We all have to deal with link spam every single day. It will reduce it some but absolutely it will not solve the problem. Is it the right move? Yes. If I were running Wikipedia I’d have done the same. You get the benefit of reduced spam while also making your site more powerful.  The people most pissed off are probably the link spammers. At least Matt Cutts will be happy.

Search technology improves everyday. It’s in the search engines best interest of course to ensure that happens if they want to grow their revenues. Users of Google, Yahoo!, MSN, or any other search engine use those engines because they feel they produce the most relevant results for their queries. Google dominates search because most Internet users (as I do) feel they produce the best search results. Most of the time anyways. Of course, we often times see spam sites dominate search results and nobody except the spammers themselves likes to see those results. As Google and the other search engines try to improve their algorithms to ensure better results for users, this means that many of those sites out on the web using techniques that go against Google’s guidelines will be at risk for penalization or deletion from their index. One of the most easily abused techniques is the use of invisible text (text that a search engine spider sees but visitors can’t). Most commonly, text is hidden by using the same colored text as the background. There are other ways of hiding text of course, stacking layers, in external CSS files, etc. Previously Google didn’t crawl through external CSS (not to my knowledge anyways) but Disney’s fan blog recent delisting proves that things are changing in that regard. Obviously, Google is trying to crack down on SEO techniques that they feel unfairly manipulate their results. It got me thinking and this leads me to the point of this post: Are the SEO techniques that you’re using on your sites (or your client’s site) safe?

As search engines like Google improve their algorithm, certain SEO techniques that have worked in the past may not work in the future. Whether it’s invisible text on something like your link building efforts, it would be wise to try to prevent your site from being smacked by the newest algorithms if you care about long term rankings. For a long time now, site owners have known the power of inbound links in improving site rankings.  This is why we all see those incredibly well written reciprocal link requests in our email box every morning. That whole process has been completely abused so sites that only gain links through link exchanges will be at risk. In a recent blog post after a recent SES, Matt Cutts said “…our algorithms can do a pretty good job of spotting excessive reciprocal links.”  He didn’t say “reciprocal links are bad” but why would their algorithm be attempting to detect reciprocal links?  Obviously they don’t approve when it’s done to excess. He did say “excessive reciprocal linking”. There’s nothing wrong with reciprocal linking but when Google detects that you have an outgoing link to all sites that are linking to you, it’s pretty obvious. When all your inbound links have the same anchor text, it’s pretty obvious. So what can you do to help ensure your sites are not in jeopardy? Don’t make your link building obvious and easy to detect. Some tips:

• When you do exchange links, make sure to link only to content related sites 
• Stay away from bad link neighborhoods. Always analyze the link profile of anyone you plan on linking to. Link to someone who is linking to a bad neighborhod, and essentially you’re linking to those sites as well.
• Make sure you have plenty of one way links to your site (at the very least buy some listings in some of the better directories).
• Make sure you deep link (get inbound links to internal pages of your site, not just your home page).
• Link to other sites that are helpful to your site visitors. Stop worrying about “leaking Page Rank”. Seriously. Share the link love if you ever want it in return.
• Vary your anchor text. The same text all the time is an obvious indicator. Make your link building look natural by using variation.
• Link Bait (or find someone to help you link bait).
• A significant jump in the amount of inbound links can be a red flag (If you’re link baiting you have nothing to worry about. If you’re spamming blogs you should be worried.)

Taking these steps should help to improve the chances that your site(s) do not face the wrath of the Google gods.