Bretts Marketing Bytes

Archive for April, 2010

Tracking results from organic SEO can be somewhat difficult, especially if you are trying to explain them to non savvy people. I came across a great method to demonstrate results  to even the most non technical people. It’s called Visibility Score.

If you use the Visibility Score formula you can track the improvements and measure your results. The score is calculated across the 3 major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing.

How it works is each ranking position is given a value up to the last result on page 3 of each search engine.  Example: Position 1 would have a value of 33.3 tied to it. Position 2 would be 32.3 and position 3 would be 31.3 and so on. Now take your position on Yahoo and Bing and then add them all together. A prefect score would equal a visibility score of 100. See below for a practical example on Visibility Score.

Google: Positions 1 = 33.3
Yahoo: Positions  2= 32.3
Bing:    Position    1= 33.3

If you total these up you get a Visibility Score of 96.9. Not too shabby. Good luck

The question of whether a company should hire an SEO before or after a site redesign often comes up in my seminars.

Let me put it this way. Would you let a contractor start to build your house without a blue print? I hope you said no.

My point is that you have to think about your web developer just like that home contractor. Their only job is to build something that functions and looks pretty. Without a blue print they cannot do this, so they rely on you to tell them what you want. However,  you are relying on them to know what works best for SEO, but I have news for you…9 times out of 10, they haven’t got the slightest clue.

Just because they are a web developer doesn’t mean they know SEO. These are two different skill sets.

Let me give you a more practical example. The other day I recieved a call from a company who just had their website redesigned and are now looking for SEO services.  They told me that they used to rank pretty well with their old site and now with their new site their rankings have completely dropped off the face of the Google. The weird part is that they told me they were okay with it, because the new site looks and functions better than the old one. ( Okay, are you kidding me?)

You can have the best looking website in the world but if no one is going to it, your site is worthless.

So I pulled up their site in my browser while I was on the phone with them and immediately noticed that their site navigation was way off for SEO efforts and worse, their pages are producing dynamic non search friendly URL’s.  Those seem like easy fixes right, yes, but the underlying technology that this site was built on was just a nightmare.

So essentially they want me to make gold out of a turd. I’ve done these types of projects before and they never turn out good.  When the technology is not right, you cannot expect good results.

In a nutshell they chose a bad platform to put their website on and probably a web developer who doesn’t know the first thing about marketing. That’s why they call themselves a web developer and not a marketer.

Web developers are not marketers.

Now this company has to back track and spend more money to try and get their website to be search friendly, when all they had to do is get guidelines in the beginning from an SEO. This would have saved them a ton of money. Instead, they are stuck with a turd.

To summarize this post and answer the question of should you hire an SEO before or after your site redesign; do yourself  a favor and start working with an SEO right away. Let them create the blue print. It will save you a boat load of money. Not to mention,  there is a lot of effort that goes into getting solid top rankings and any good SEO might turn down the offer to work with your company if the technology is not going to work in their favor.

To know how to find a good SEO firm you must understand the difference between performing SEO tasks and actually getting ranking results.

Whats the difference between SEO and ranking results?

First off there is a lot of gray area when it comes to the term SEO. So your company might sign up for SEO services and not get any results. WHY? because there are a lot of web development firms/SEO firms claiming to perform SEO techniques but they are only doing the bare minimum or what was good 5 years ago.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Think about this… What does that mean? It means that a company will optimize  your website for search engines. In the old days when a site was ranked well, we used to say, wow, thank site is optimized. But today it is much different and there is more that goes into it than just optimizing a page or site.

Optimizing a page is the process of changing page copy and meta tags to include keywords. But, what about link building? Is link building really SEO? A lot of people think so, but I disagree. I think Link building is a part of the end result, which is “Ranking.” I truly believe there is a difference between SEO and Ranking, and if you understand the difference between the two,  you can protect yourself from being mislead.

On-page optimization

Everyone and their brother is doing on-page optimization(Changing page copy and meta tags.) What makes you think that your website is going to rank better than any of theirs?  I hope you don’t say because you have your keywords on the page more frequently than they do. Oh boy, you are really behind if you think that. Those days are long gone. Search engines are way smarter than that now.

On-page optimization is the bare minimum that needs to be done. There is so much more that goes into ranking a page on a website for key terms.

So, how do you know if you are getting the bare minimum? I have created a small list of red flags below.

You are not going to get results:

• When you pay cheap prices. If you are paying cheap prices chances are good you are getting cheap service and you are wasting your money. I had a client who was paying $100 per month to another company before me to rank for 15 keywords. Needless to say they were not ranking for anything after 1 year. If you are paying $100 per month you will never rank for anything unless you get lucky. Save your money and learn SEO on your own.
• When an SEO asks you to come up with your own keywords. How can you come up with your own keywords, you are not the expert, the SEO is. The SEO should only use your keywords as a guideline toward better key terms.
• When the SEO firm tries to rank your home page for more than 3 terms.
• When the SEO firm does not create landing pages for your products or services. I just met with a company who was working with another SEO/web firm who was trying to rank their home page for 10 key terms. Think about this. If Google’s whole algorithm is based on  pulling up relevant content for a search query, how could your home page possibly be relevant for 10 terms? It can’t.
• When the SEO firm does not create links to your individual pages. You cannot rank for competitive terms without links. Note: not just directory submissions either.
• When the SEO firm does not provide monthly ranking reports. How do you know how you are ranking if you cannot see progress?
• When the SEO firm does not offer recommendations on site structure. 9 times out of 10 when I go in to talk to a company their site navigation structure is a mess when it comes to SEO and Ranking.
• When the SEO firm says that they will rank your site for broad terms. Example: Candy, Plumbing, cards, drinks… This should tell you that they don’t understand targeting and they are flat out lying. Those terms are too broad.
• When the SEO firm guarantees results. Truthfully no one can guarantee results as the search engines are in charge not the SEO.
• When the SEO firm cannot provide both national and geographic examples of their work.

I hope these help. Zoodle Marketing Group provides top end ranking results.