SoloSEO

Announcing SoloSEO.com, a new SEO Project Management solution

Posted by Michael D Jensen on November 29th, 2006

It’s official! SoloSEO.com launches today a SEO Project Management service for search marketing professionals as well as do-it-yourself web marketers. The SoloSEO service saves you time and headaches by managing keywords, content, and link building all from one integrated service.

Try a 14-day free trial and see for yourself how SoloSEO can help you. There’s no credit card required for the free trial, and it only takes 60 seconds to sign up. Thereafter the monthly service is available at an introductory price of $29 per month for up to 5 websites.

After trying it out we encourage you to write a review of SoloSEO. As an incentive, the first 20 reviews will get a free 12-month membership to SoloSEO! (see details below)

A few highlights of SoloSEO:

Keywords – manage your lists of keywords in one place, organize by topic and “top” keywords, with easy search and sort options. Powerful keyword tools for finding keywords including a tool that searches 3 keyword sources simultaneously and another tool that scans a site for keywords (yours, a competitors, etc).

Content – track the backlinks (inbound links) and PageRank of landing pages and other important pages of your site to help focus content optimization and link building on pages that need it the most.

Link Building – a powerful system for managing link building from start to finish. Find potential links with optimized search queries from the Link Search tool, assess the strength of a link with Link Build It! (a bookmarklet), and easily add the link to your link manager. Add comments when a link has been contacted and change the status as a link progresses. After a link has been contacted, SoloSEO automatically checks the linking page if the link is there or not.

Reports – run informative reports for competitive analysis and keyword ranking. Reports are saved and can be emailed to clients, etc.

Site Statistics – Your statistics for your site including backlinks, pages indexed, PageRank, and Alexa rating are automatically updated weekly and can show the progress of each SEO campaign over time.

Competitors – Find competitors and look at their backlinks quickly, then add potential links directly to your link manager. Find and keep a list of your competitors, including statistics like backlinks, pages indexed, PageRank, and Alexa ranking.

SoloSEO’s tools and reports will make it easier for anyone doing search engine optimization. Once you try it, it will be hard to go without it! Sign up now to try SoloSEO for free for 14-days.

** First 20 Reviews – Rules **

As an incentive to try out SoloSEO and share your own review, we are giving away 12 month subscriptions to the first twenty (20) reviews of SoloSEO. Reviews should be honest (we realize there are still improvements to make) and based on a thorough test of the system. This offer is subject to the following rules:

1) An email must be submitted to reviews@soloseo.com and include the URL (link) to the review along with the username of the trial account of the reviewer.

2) This offer is open to anyone 18-years and older.

3) Reviews must be posted on the Web and be available for public access without registration.

4) Reviews must be a minimum of 500 words, and must be unique (don’t copy from our site or other reviews). A link back to this blog post or the site should be included.

5) Reviews must be based on a thorough test of the system (will be verified by internal server logs of SoloSEO)

6) Submissions should be an honest review at the benefits and features of SoloSEO. Reviews will not be rejected if negative comments are a part of the review, as long as it is honest and gives an explanation.

7) SoloSEO reserves the right to reject any submission for any reason. (Not that we will, but just in case)

You agree to allow SoloSEO to use your review and your name for any promotional purposes.

9) SoloSEO reserves the right to change or cancel this offer at any time for any reason.

6 comments Visited 7918 times November 29th, 2006 Michael D Jensen

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How to obtain, sustain and maintain SEO clients

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on November 29th, 2006

Most businesses in a competitive marketplace view analysis of competitors as one of the most important aspects of remaining in business. Successful businesses are aware and attempt to out compete rivals by exploiting advantages, such as lower prices, higher quality or better services. Without information about a competitor and the marketplace, firms cannot know how best to compete against them.

This competitive concern is of rapidly increasing importance in the online marketing world. As search engines continue to improve search technologies based on actual relevance and generally accepted SEO practices, business will need assistance in getting their online presence to be more competitively viable, and obviously more visible.

SEO professionals can use a business’ necessary interest in competitors as an “in” to OBTAIN more clients. As business owners ourselves, we currently receive hundreds of emails and phone calls annually from various consultants offering their “services and expertise” to assist us in “building our businesses.” It is pretty easy to tell these folks to take a hike, since rarely do any of them hook us with something we believe we need, or can’t do better on our own. However, SEO professionals have an advantage when pitching business people with a similar mindset. The concept of SEO is still not widely understood among the business community, although most understand the importance of being in first position on a search engine results page, and they are more than willing to pay for this number 1 position, they do not know how to make optimization a reality. The only unfortunate challenge to overcome, is these same business professionals are also now wary of “techie” promises and programming “voodoo,” which is usually not explained or understood, and does not deliver the promised results within a reasonable amount of time. The stories of these types of technological swindles are commonplace, and frequently repeated in business circles.

The key for SEOs, when attempting to obtain new clients, is the ability to communicate concisely where the client is positioned in the online marketplace, explain what SEO processes need to be done, why SEO will help, provide reports on the progress, and eventually deliver the results expected.

Here is what we suggest should be done to hook new business savvy clients to your SEO services…

First, SEO professionals need to contact potential clients and simply offer them a free “online competitive analysis report” (available at SoloSEO.com), which will show the target company a snapshot of how they stack up against their online competitors. Every business person, truly concerned with their firm’s success, will find this offer hard to decline.

Second, after running the report and compiling the information. I would suggest sending the potential clients these reports, with an explanation as to what the data means (either via text or over the phone), and then a brief synopsis of what you could do to help them in the online environment in a proposal format.

Third, once a fair price is negotiated and the client is OBTAINED, it is important to give this client frequent updates to your progress, via formal reports (available at SoloSEO.com), at pre-determined intervals in order to MAINTAIN the good relationship and momentum. If businesses are paying for a service, they have a right to expect a reporting of the process, and SEOs are obligated to provide these updates when requested. Over time clients will become more familiar with the format and information contained on the reports, and just a quick email with the reports attached, without explanation, will provide them all they need to feel “in the loop.” Personally, I do not like receiving updates too frequently, as it can become rather annoying. I prefer to receive reports only when there is unusually good/bad news, or just a monthly synopsis of what has been accomplished the previous 4 weeks. Each client will have different expectations, so asking the client how often they want to hear from you is preferable, then stick to their schedule to build good will.

We also suggest providing clients an expected time for completion of the initial optimization, after you have had some time to analyze their existing site. This gives clients a timeline to gauge the SEO progress, which can reduce suspicion of technological foul play.

As a client’s site becomes more optimized and the site begins to perform better, we suggest documenting these changes in a report (done automatically in SoloSEO.com) to build and SUSTAIN a long-term relationship. When clients see the results of your efforts, they will be more inclined to provide you with the recognition, referrals and long-term agreement you desire and deserve. Additionally, always keep an eye on a client’s competitors and what they are doing online. If your client’s competitors are sharp, they too will begin to figure out what needs to be done and start the optimization process. This competitive change could escalate the importance of your service in your client’s eyes, and your staying on top of it demonstrates you care about the client’s competitive position. Most clients will begin to feel relief with the knowledge you are actively watching and protecting their online interests.

This being said, there will unfortunately be some SEOs who will recognize an obvious financial opportunity to contact an existing client’s competitors, and attempt to entice them to pay for SEO services. Most likely suggesting these new clients must optimize to keep pace with the original clients progress. This is a serious conflict of interest, it is unethical, poor judgement, and potentially illegal depending on the agreement signed with each client, please avoid this practice. I can’t think of anything more pathetic (and useless) than an SEO offering their prison cellmate free SEO services in exchange for gang protection, or some smokes. Seriously, SEO has already earned a somewhat tarnished image through various tawdry link exchange swindles, and other questionable ineffective SEO practices, and now only time, with honest SEO effort and ethical behavior, can eventually overcome this negative perception.

Honesty in business might be a bit boring to some, but I would suggest it is still the best chance at long-term success. As an example, if you find a potential client has very few online competitors, or if they don’t need much SEO help within their industry to rank them highly, tell this to the client, explain the current situation to them, and why they are doing well. But also let them know it is a perfect time to start the optimization process, so they will enjoy a future competitive advantage over others which will eventually come online. I believe the benefits from a new small client will prove to be far more profitable, over time, than charging a small firm for more SEO service than is really required at the given time.

Of our companies, Michael and I currently have two which provide proprietary technology to 4 Fortune 500 companies, and many other small business. We have found being brutally honest with all clients, even if it is not flattering to our own system or our performance, has proven to be the best strategy in building long-lasting and profitable relationships. Sugar coating situations or attempts at misinformation to protect an image do not instill confidence, and usually backfire, ruining a potentially great vendor/client relationship.

In short, just remember business people love to see progress, and what is actually being done for the money they have spent and plan to spend. Progress reports done well can communicate this progress effectively and efficiently. These reports can calm clients, providing them with data they crave, allowing you the time required to perform SEO processes properly, which eventually delivers the predicted outcome to the target site. Great progress reporting will assist you OBTAIN, MAINTAIN and SUSTAIN new clients, which is the very reason reports are an important aspect of SoloSEO.com.

1 comment Visited 4518 times November 29th, 2006 Aaron R Stewart

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$200 of Free MSN ads, WOM gets expensive

Posted by Michael D Jensen on November 27th, 2006

MSN is jump-starting adCenter with a bang with $200 of free ads for signing up. I tried the sign up but it must not like Macs because I couldn’t select the currency on the payment ($5) form, and when I submitted it an error came back that I hadn’t “agreed” yet. I’ll wander over to firefox one of these days. It also seems like they are trying to trick you because you actually have to copy and paste the code on the first page to the third page, but maybe that makes their margins possible. If just 1000 sign up, that’s $200,000 of ads they pay out to advertisers, which seems to be some pretty expensive word of mouth (WOM).

2 comments Visited 4776 times November 27th, 2006 Michael D Jensen

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PubCon’s Top Ten lessons every SEO should know

Posted by Michael D Jensen on November 22nd, 2006

I was a first-time PubCon attendee, and it was certainly eye-opening. It’s amazing how we have these “celebrities” in SEO (how about celebSEOs?) that everyone draws to, whispers about, or suffocates with questions. I was also surprised at how many people were there that really knew very little about search marketing. Don’t they read blogs? Okay, now that’s off my back. Here’s my PubCon recap for the top ten lessons that every SEO should know:

1) Don’t let the bozos grind you down. This was Guy Kawasaki’s 11th point, and to me it is about innovation. Be innovative, think beyond what you do right now, and be something more. Others are going to shoot you down, but just keep going (unless a lot of people say it’s a dumb idea).

2) Business owners know business, and Search marketers know search. I’ve worked with many designers and the one rule I have learned is to let them be designers. A hidden lesson in that is that as the business owner we need to give EVERYTHING we possibly can to the designers, search marketers, INSERT ANOTHER VENDOR HERE to give them something to work with. If we don’t, they may deliver a top notch product from their perspective, but a poor execution from your perspective.

3) SNACC – speed, navigability, accessibility, clarity, and comfort. Maybe I’m alone but I thought Adam’s presentation was awful. He came up with this acronym on the flight over, and put together the presentation on the flight too (we could tell). I’m sorry, but if you want some respect then at least don’t say that and pretty up your presentation. He also said avoid italics, which was kind of weird. And no two links on page should go to same place, which might be good advice. Basically, usability = good SEO. Adam, get a mac for your next presentation and use Keynote.app, you’ll at least be one (big) step ahead even if you make your presentation on the flight.

4) Get links from small magazines. Martinibuster (Roger Montti) gave one of the best talks, in my opinion. One suggestion was to get links from smaller magazines, which can cost as little as $60/year. He suggested doing searches like ["advertise with us" keyword -CPM] and ["rate care" -CPM advertising] and ["sponsors" -cpm site:.org keyword]. I will add these to our Link Search Tool. He also suggested to look for job fairs to get links from .edu sites.

5) Let them build your brand. John Battelle gave a great talk on search as the next interface. He suggests to let your audience interact with you and “build your brand”. Think of amazon (recommendations) and ebay. He also said content is once again king and the landing page is queen.

6) On Digg (et al) it matters more who starts it. This was from the reporter/blogger forum. Although submitting your own is okay, you are more likely to get more visibility when it is first Dugg by a well-networked digger. There was a top 100 digger in the room, but few know his/her identity.

7) Attach stuff to press releases. When doing press releases it is recommended to attach an image (screenshot, logo?, or product), attach or link to a video (tutorial, introduction, commercial, ?), and to create MS Word, PDF files of the press release that are also indexed by the engines. Greg Jarboe said an image makes it 90% more likely it will go in a newspaper (I’m sure this depends on the industry/market). 89% of journalists prefer to get info by email. Pitch to bloggers (short and sweet though, and not cookie cutter).

Use WOMM (word of mouth marketing). The web is the new medium for WOMM, and 20% of WOMM is already done online. WOMM when online, doesn’t die. Consumer generated media is a good approach (see lesson 5). Get product in the hands of influencers, then listen online to what people are saying.

9) Widgets for SEO. If you can make a good viral widget, it can go a long way. Start with this widget blog for ideas. Essentially if you create a widget you can have a link back to you so every time it is installed you get a “free” link. Consider changing up the link text on the download page to cycle through your favorite keywords.

10) Link bait is good SEO. Write a story to spread, have some controversy/polarization, look comprehensive, cite research and link out, make it pretty, don’t over monetize, use link bait portals (digg, slashdot, fark, de.licio.us, reddit, boing boing, techmeme, techcrunch, netscape, lifehacker, stumbleupon, chatwire – and yes in this order per Rand Fishkin)

If you missed PubCon, definitely plan on going next year. There were several sessions that I missed because I had to choose between two interesting sessions. Thankfully Barry (et al.) has some great recaps of PubCon 2006 Las Vegas.

Add comment Visited 5475 times November 22nd, 2006 Michael D Jensen

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MBAs vs. SEOs

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on November 20th, 2006

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed WebmasterWorld’s PubCon in Las Vegas last week. It was very informative, and frankly even entertaining at times. To start it became very apparent, and seemed to be a consensus among the SEO elite including, Guy Kawasaki, Danny Sullivan, Andy Beal, Rand Fiskin, Aaron Wall, among others, that writing a blog is quite important in this industry, so I too throw my hat into the ring…

To start I must admit I was one of the few MBAs in the crowd during Guy Kawasaki’s keynote, and probably the remainder of the conference. I was not used to being the target of so much ire, but I enjoyed the banter, It was similar to how MBA’s make fun of attorneys and accountants.

I found Mr. Kawasaki’s comments appropriate, and entertaining, but his comments on MBAs brought to mind an important aspect to SEO I think we all need to remember. Although most MBAs probably don’t quite grasp in technical terms what needs to be done to optimize their corporate websites, they still need to understand the process, and feel comfortable in the probable results of the SEO process, because they usually sign the checks. It’s just that simple. If SEO pros can’t explain, demonstrate, and predict the probable outcomes of the SEO process, they are not going to get the opportunity to perform in the first place.

On the other side of this debate is what MBAs and non-technical business owners think of SEO and these “services.” Unfortunately many MBAs have seen the process of SEO as just a bunch of technological smoke and mirrors, with questionable results, resulting from even more questionable practices. Paid link exchange being a good example. The idea that you could pay an entity to throw a link to your website up on zillions of other sites with little or no relevance to your own, and this would help you achieve a better position on a search page based on relevance is counterintuitive, if not just plain idiotic. This notion goes against everything MBAs are taught in the various marketing/advertising classes.

Now, I will admit much of the blame has to be pointed at the engines and their inability to efficiently thwart the activities of those who participated in these back alley SEO schemes. And by all accounts the industry is going to be further standardized, and more reputable going forward, but the damage to the integrity the SEO process is somewhat damaged, and will take some time, and sound practice to repair.

Based on what was presented at Pubcon, I am very encouraged as both an MBA and a SEO business owner at the direction of the SEO industry. Improving technologies, and standardized practices by the engines will make participating in the SEO market a more predictable and fair endeavor, where hard work, unique content, and solid links will be the pillars of highly regarded sites, and relevance will truly be king.

Add comment Visited 4037 times November 20th, 2006 Aaron R Stewart

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